The U.S. government is negotiating with Central Asian states to reduce dependence on Russia and China / Photo: Shutterstock and Freepik
According to Elizabeth Horst, principal deputy assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary for Pakistan Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, the U.S. government is working to reduce Kazakhstan’s dependence on Moscow in the energy sector, as the U.S. and Kazakhstan are long-term partners in this sphere. She made this statement at hearings in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Russian TASS news agency reported.
What happened? While delivering a speech at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Horst said that the US is helping the Central Asian states to cope with the consequences of anti-Russian sanctions and are ready to offer an alternative to relations with Russia and China.
«They are asking us for support regarding sanctions, for help in finding a way to resist that pressure (by Russia and China). They want us to give them an alternative. In terms of sanctions, our cooperation is quite active, especially with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which want to protect their economies from collapsing,» TASS reported, citing Horst.
She also noted that the U.S. has gained an opportunity to strengthen relations with Central Asian countries.
The context: In April 2023, U.S. and British authorities said that they would introduce secondary sanctions on Kazakhstani businesses and banks for assisting Russia to bypass international sanctions imposed against this country.
In June, the EU also agreed to adopt a range of restrictions against countries assisting Russia to breach Western sanctions. However, Europe is likely to restrain itself from putting this punishing mechanism into practice.
Kazakhstan has become one of the main routes for parallel imports of goods no longer available in Russia after a massive exodus of Western companies and suppliers from this country. According to some media reports, Kazakhstani businesses’ purchases of fridges and breast pumps in Europe have risen threefold and fivefold, respectively. Given that the birth rate in Kazakhstan is gradually declining, the high interest in breast pumps seems strange.
Russia has been at war with Ukraine since February 24, 2022. At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and decided to attack Ukraine. He also justified his decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the intention to «demilitarize» and «denazify» Ukraine.
