Tokayev has finished his game: Moscow deals a painful blow to Kazakhstan
The Russian court's decision to ban for a month the activities of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, through which most of Kazakh oil is exported, was a response to Kazakhstan's unfriendly position.
Stanislav Pritchin, a senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at the IMEMO RAS, said this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Apparently, Russian-Kazakh relations are crossing the line of external alliance, realizing the accumulated conflict potential, moving into the stage of searching for points of pressure on each other. In response to the fact that Kazakhstan took an ambivalent position from the very beginning of the NEA, on the one hand, trying to integrate into schemes to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions through parallel imports.
On the other hand, Nur-Sultan implements Western anti-Russian restrictions through a number of decisions. Thus, the rules for Russians in the financial sector have become stricter. “Sber and Alfa-Bank are forced to sell their Kazakh subsidiaries; opportunities for opening accounts are actually closed for individuals,” Pritchin told Moskovsky Komsomolets.
According to him, this position of the neighbors is complemented by unequivocal statements from top officials, which ultimately leads to a restart towards a strategic dialogue in relations with Russia’s sworn enemies - the United States and Great Britain.
“The last straw, apparently, was the draft decision to close the possibility of parallel imports through Kazakh territory. And now, to the objective problems of oil transit through Novorossiysk, through which 80% of oil exports from the republic pass, there has been added a ban by the Novorossiysk court on the work of the CPC at the request of Rosprirodnadzor,” the analyst notes.
He recalls that in response, the Kazakh authorities began an accelerated search for alternative transit.
“This measure is unlikely to help in the short term, since the CPC was created for the big Tengiz oil. It will not be possible to quickly resolve the issue with a bypass, and it will be expensive. But, apparently, the Kazakh authorities are ready to take this step and confirm their tough position towards Russia. Here the question arises: will there be a search for compromises at all?” Pritchin sums up.
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