For many years Russia was seen in Central Asia not only as a guarantor of external security, but also as a critical factor in the political survival of local regimes. In effect, an unspoken but clearly understood political contract took shape over time: Moscow provided the elites with a certain level of stability in exchange for their ostentatious loyalty. Recent events, however — the full-scale war against Ukraine, the rapid collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and the Kremlin’s strikingly restrained response to crises in Iran and Venezuela — point to a fundamental revision of these unwritten rules.
Today Russian policy toward friendly regimes is steadily shedding its «paternalistic» character. Instead of unconditional backing for «its own» leaders, Moscow increasingly behaves like a pragmatic arbiter, ready to build workable relations with any authority willing to cooperate on acceptable terms.
Moscow is abandoning its allies
In December 2024 the Assad regime fell in Syria. The country came under the control of Ahmed al-Sharaa (better known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — a group still regarded as terrorist in Central Asia, and one whose ranks continue to include a significant number of fighters from the region.
What caused the greatest unease across Central Asia was not so much the regime change itself, but Moscow’s reaction. After granting Assad asylum, Russia almost immediately opened talks with the new authorities — and Vladimir Putin personally received al-Sharaa in the Kremlin. The impression was unmistakable: for Moscow, manageability of the government now takes clear priority over the identity of the person heading it.
Moscow has acted similarly toward other allies. In June 2025 Israel struck Iran, and in January 2026 U.S. special forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela — in both cases the Russian Foreign Ministry confined itself to routine, pro-forma statements.
A comparable precedent had already occurred inside the region itself. In 2020 another «people’s revolution» in Kyrgyzstan brought Sadyr Japarov to power — a politician who had spent years abroad evading prosecution by the authorities. Upon his return he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of hostage-taking during the 2013 Kumtor mine protests, where he had demanded nationalization of the gold deposit.
Once in the presidency, Japarov quickly moved to demonstrate loyalty to Moscow. The Kremlin, for its part, turned a blind eye to the fact that the new authorities had come to power «from the street.» Not long ago such a scenario would have been unthinkable: regimes that emerged from street protests were automatically deemed illegitimate in Moscow’s eyes. To this day Vladimir Putin refuses to recognize Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s legitimate president, citing the 2014 Euromaidan as an unconstitutional seizure of power. Nikol Pashinyan, who rose to power in Armenia in 2018 amid mass rallies, was accepted by Moscow only after proving (however conditionally) his loyalty.
Now the Kremlin’s stance has become markedly more pragmatic: formal legitimacy has receded into the background; what matters foremost is control of the situation and predictability on the part of the new authorities.
Autocrats under the Kremlin’s wing
After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Central Asian states tried hard to reduce their dependence on Moscow: they built their own armies, bought weapons abroad, and cultivated ties with NATO. Yet instability in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s rise to power in the mid-1990s, growing terrorism, and domestic conflicts — the Tajik civil war, Kyrgyz-Uzbek clashes — quickly exposed the fragility of local armed forces. Russia promptly filled the resulting security vacuum.
In Tajikistan the 201st Guards Military Base remains stationed (until 2004 it was the 201st Motor Rifle Gatchina Twice Red Banner Division of the Soviet, then Russian, armed forces). At the request of Tajik leaders, Russian troops patrolled the Tajik-Afghan border and trained local border guards.
In 1999 fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, led by Juma Namangani, invaded Kyrgyzstan’s Batken district from Tajikistan, seizing villages and hostages. With Russian support, Kyrgyz and Uzbek forces managed to expel them by 2000. Against that backdrop, Russia established the Kant airbase in Kyrgyzstan in 2003.
In Kazakhstan Russia retained access to key military facilities, including the Baikonur cosmodrome and test ranges.
Even formally neutral Turkmenistan, with its small army, counted on Moscow’s backing: in spring 2015, when radical Islamists threatened the Turkmen-Afghan border, Moscow and Tashkent sent border units to reinforce security there.
Across the region countries purchased Russian weapons at preferential prices and regularly held joint exercises within the CSTO framework.
Under Putin, Moscow also became a guarantor of personal security for Central Asian leaders. In exchange for political loyalty the Kremlin — unlike Western partners — demanded no reforms, no fair elections, no liberalization. Russia was perceived as the most comprehensible and predictable partner, helped enormously by the shared Soviet-era background of Putin and most regional leaders: they speak the same language and think in similar categories.
When Nursultan Nazarbayev harshly suppressed the Zhanaozen oil workers’ protests in 2011, the Kremlin chose silence. That was not an oversight but part of the tacit bargain: Moscow stays out of internal affairs in return for loyalty.
Over time an informal rule emerged in the region: to count on Moscow’s help in a crisis, one must notify it in advance of the most sensitive processes — above all, power transitions. Hence the widespread belief that a successor should at least be informally cleared with the Kremlin beforehand.
All regional leaders have operated within this logic. One popular explanation for why Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has still not handed power to his son Rustam is purported Moscow displeasure: the heir is supposedly too inexperienced for a country facing high security risks due to its proximity to Afghanistan.
Nazarbayev long promoted his elder daughter Dariga as a possible successor, systematically introducing her to Russian elites. In the end, power passed in 2019 to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev — a figure entirely acceptable to Moscow: MGIMO graduate, former Soviet and Russian diplomat.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev relies on Russia even more heavily than his predecessor Islam Karimov did. His own rise in 2016 was facilitated to a large degree by Rustam Inoyatov (then head of the National Security Service and known for close ties to Russian security structures) and oligarch Alisher Usmanov (well connected in Kremlin circles). Mirziyoyev has consistently presented his elder daughter Saida — who heads the presidential administration and has become de facto the country’s second-most powerful figure — to Russian leadership: in 2025 she held a series of meetings with senior officials in Moscow, including Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
In practice, though, Moscow prefers to leave internal political matters to the regional leaders themselves, and its supposed «deciding voice» in choosing successors is frequently exaggerated. The main thing for the Kremlin is that the new leader maintain roughly the same degree of loyalty as the predecessor. In return for this (increasingly symbolic) support, Central Asian leaders play by the rules: they actively participate in the CSTO and EAEU, yet in international conflicts centered on Russia they steadfastly maintain neutrality.
Examples of this cautious line go back years. After the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, not a single Central Asian country recognized Abkhazia or South Ossetia — though within the CSTO format they expressed «understanding» of Russia’s position. The 2014 annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas elicited a similar reaction: no one recognized Crimea as Russian, but during the UN General Assembly vote on Resolution 68/262 on Ukraine’s territorial integrity (March 27, 2014), Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan abstained, while Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and (again) Uzbekistan did not participate. Such restraint stemmed from the countries’ own unresolved territorial disputes: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan feared unwanted parallels with the ethnically mixed Ferghana Valley; Kazakhstan worried about its northern regions.
Yet over time it has grown harder to balance the desire to please Moscow with the defense of national interests.
Dependence without guarantees
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine awakened long-standing fears among Central Asian elites: Russia can be not only a provider of security but also a source of threat.
The first response was to strengthen ties with other external players — China, the United States, the European Union. None of those partners, however, has been able (or willing) to expand its security presence in the region to a level that could make it a genuine alternative to Russia.
For China the priority remains economic expansion rather than building a collective defense system. Beijing consistently avoids commitments that could draw it into direct military intervention. Some reports suggest China is quietly strengthening security forces in Tajikistan, including rumors of a covert Chinese military facility near the Wakhan Corridor and the Tajik-Afghan mountainous border (neither Dushanbe nor Beijing officially confirms this). Even so, such steps are aimed squarely at protecting Chinese interests — investments, citizens, transport corridors — against cross-border threats, chiefly from Afghanistan. This is classic risk insurance, not readiness to assume responsibility for partners’ security.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, China has publicly reaffirmed respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Central Asian states. Yet behind the declarations there has been neither institutionalization of military guarantees nor significant expansion of military-technical assistance. Increased purchases of Chinese weapons by regional countries are not new; the trend predates 2022 and stems mainly from the economic and technical advantages of Chinese products over Russian ones. This is diversification of suppliers, not a fundamental redesign of the regional security architecture.
The high point of Western engagement in the region coincided with the U.S.-NATO operation in Afghanistan, when Central Asia served as part of the logistics and counter-terrorism infrastructure. As that mission wound down, American and European interest visibly declined, and cooperation became increasingly tied to political conditions linked to reforms and liberalization. Even the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and handover of some military equipment to regional states did not evolve into a long-term strategy: it appeared as a tactical move amid a hasty exit rather than a signal of willingness to assume lasting security commitments.
As a result, in the security domain Central Asian states still see no real alternative to Russia. Paradoxically, the war in Ukraine has only deepened that dependence. Isolated by sanctions and internationally, Russia itself has come to need partners — and regional loyalty has proven timely. Putin has made frequent visits to Central Asia, while its leaders have become honored guests at Victory Day parades. For Central Asian elites this sent an unambiguous message: distancing from Moscow is disadvantageous, and deep economic and migration interdependence makes a complete break unrealistic.
Yet economic closeness does not resolve fundamental security problems. Events on the Tajik-Afghan border in late November-early December 2025 illustrated this vividly. Attacks by Afghan militants on sites linked to Chinese investments killed five Chinese citizens and wounded five more. Reuters briefly reported in early December that Tajikistan might ask Moscow to strengthen southern border security — either through CSTO forces or by expanding the 201st Russian military base — though the story was later withdrawn as insufficiently corroborated.
Regardless, Moscow’s ability to perform such a role effectively no longer appears unconditional. The 201st base in Tajikistan and the Kant airbase in Kyrgyzstan have, over the years of the Ukraine war, lost significant personnel: redeployments to the front have reduced rapid-response capacity and weakened the overall regional military posture. Formally almost all regional states belong to the CSTO, yet in practice the organization applies its mandate selectively. A stark example is 2010, when Bishkek requested help during ethnic clashes in Osh, but Moscow refused to intervene, citing the conflict’s internal nature. Russian security guarantees failed likewise in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict within the formal CSTO alliance. The sole clear case of direct intervention remains January 2022 in Kazakhstan, when — at Tokayev’s request — the CSTO dispatched roughly 2,500 «collective peacekeeping forces» (most of them Russian).
Central Asian elites thus find themselves trapped between two impossibilities: they cannot break with Moscow, yet they also cannot rely on it as an unconditional guarantor. It is precisely this gap — between persistent dependence and growing unreliability on Moscow’s part — that now defines Central Asia’s strategic position.
