Some speculate that by drawing its southern neighbors into closer cooperation on gas, Russia wants to gain control over Central Asian exports to China. That won’t be easy.

Moscow had every opportunity to make the Central Asian nations gravitate toward it of their own accord. Yet now Russian soft power in Central Asia is dissipating before our eyes.

Concerns and public resentment over the influx of Russians cannot be seen any other way than through the prism of the long colonial history between the Central Asian states and the Russian (and later Soviet) empire.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the red lines in its relationship with Russia have been unclear for Kazakhstan. If earlier Kazakhstan holding military drills with NATO would not have angered Russia, now Moscow sees itself as being at war with the West and may act much more aggressively.

The war in Ukraine has enabled Kazakhstan’s Tokayev to reinvent himself as a truly independent figure, no longer reliant on either his predecessor Nazarbayev or Russia’s Putin. Now Tokayev hopes to cement this status by securing a popular mandate to rule.

A social media post by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warning that northern Kazakhstan could be next in line after Ukraine was quickly taken down, but it reflects the mindset of Russian hawks and is entirely in keeping with Russian political dialogue, where few taboos remain.