{"id":6209,"date":"2025-01-17T21:36:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T21:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=6209"},"modified":"2025-01-17T21:36:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T21:36:56","slug":"russias-economic-woes-starting-to-overflow-into-kazakhstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2025\/01\/17\/russias-economic-woes-starting-to-overflow-into-kazakhstan\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s economic woes starting to overflow into Kazakhstan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

https:\/\/eurasianet.org\/russias-economic-woes-starting-to-overflow-into-kazakhstan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The value of the tenge, Kazakhstan’s currency, has dropped dramatically in recent months, hovering around 520-530 tenge per US dollar since the beginning of December. For comparison, the exchange rate was around 450 tenge per one US dollar in the beginning of 2024—its value has decreased by 13% over the course of the year. Many Kazakhs, facing inflation of consumer prices, have begun to express distrust in the government, as their Vice Minister of National Economy, Arman Kasenov, had just claimed in October that this year’s “healthier trade balance” would prevent devaluation. While trade relations with China have been steadily increasing, Russia remained Kazakhstan’s primary trade partner for most of the year. This dependence on Russia’s failing economy is thought to be the main cause for Kazakhstan’s economic struggle. Kazakhstan’s national bank has already begun working to stabilize the economy, but there is likely a long road ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia has all but collapsed every other aspect of its economy in favor of funding its ongoing war in Ukraine. This unsustainable military spending, combined with dropping prices of oil—Russia’s main export—and sanctions against Russian businesses, has caused severe devaluation of the Russian ruble. It is going to be nearly impossible for Russia to keep up war efforts and keep its economy functioning for very long. Russia has historically been one of Kazakhstan’s most important trade partners, which has caused the two economies to become intertwined. As Russia’s economy is collapsing, these ties are causing Kazakhstan’s economy to decline as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Kazakhstan is experiencing negative effects from being too reliant on one trade partner, it will likely opt for a more balanced approach to trade in the future, dividing their trade between multiple partners. So far they have mainly increased trade with China and Italy. China will likely replace Russia as Kazakhstan’s main trade partner in the near future, and Kazakhstan will distance itself further from Russia economically and politically. Economic issues aside, the war in Ukraine has deteriorated Russia-Kazakhstan relations overall. Kazakhstan is concerned that it could be targeted next for similar reasons, as Kazakhstan has a large ethnic Russian population in the North and was formerly a Soviet state, much like Ukraine. This threat could lead Kazakhstan to try and find partners for defense agreements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potential Russian invasion isn’t as big of a threat to Kazakhstan as some may think. Due to the region’s geopolitics, Russia sees Ukraine as much more valuable than Kazakhstan. The first reason for this is Ukraine’s proximity to NATO countries. NATO is Russia’s biggest rival, and Russia’s realist approach to security means that they would want to claim Ukraine before it can join NATO to avoid NATO getting too close to Russia’s territory. The second reason is the heartland theory, which claims that controlling Eurasia can allow a country to control all of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ukraine is a part of the Eurasian “heartland”, so Russia may see gaining that territory as a way to gain world power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/eurasianet.org\/russias-economic-woes-starting-to-overflow-into-kazakhstan The value of the tenge, Kazakhstan’s currency, has dropped dramatically in recent months, hovering around 520-530 tenge per US dollar since the beginning of December. For comparison, the exchange rate was around 450 tenge per one US dollar in the beginning of 2024—its value has decreased by 13% over the course of the year. Many Kazakhs, facing inflation of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,80],"class_list":["post-6209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis-post","tag-kazakhstan","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6223,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6209\/revisions\/6223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}