President Nursultan Nazarbayev has paid a visit to Kiev to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko – Vladimir Putin’s sworn enemy – the day before heading to Moscow for an important meeting of the fledgling Eurasian Economic Union.
Poroshenko used Nazarbayev’s surprise visit to Kiev on December 22 (announced with just three days’ notice) to thank him for Kazakhstan’s “firm and consistent position of support to the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” The remarks are guaranteed to arouse the ire of Putin, whose annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in March sparked international condemnation and Western sanctions against Russia.
Nazarbayev took a conciliatory line, calling on Moscow and Kiev to move from confrontation to compromise. But his very presence in Ukraine is likely to irritate Putin, coming the day before leaders of member states of the Eurasian Economic Union, a new regional integration effort to be launched on January 1, meet in Moscow.
At that meeting, Kyrgyzstan is expected to join the union – alongside Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia – which Putin has sought to expand to boost the Kremlin’s regional clout in the face of Moscow’s geopolitical setbacks in Ukraine.
Nazarbayev is suspicious of Putin’s political aspirations for the union, and insists that the project is purely about economic integration. Ahead of his visits to Kiev and Moscow, he described talk that the new body is tantamount to a reincarnation of the Soviet Union as “total nonsense.”
Kazakhstan is traditionally one of Russia’s closest allies, but the Ukraine crisis has tested the usually tight-knit relationship. Nazarbayev has looked askance at Russia’s infringements of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, mindful of the obvious parallels with his own country (which also shares a long border with Russia and is home to a large ethnic Russian population). Remarks made by Putin this summer casting aspersions on Kazakhstan’s statehood have also caused jitters in Astana.
Nazarbayev has declined to be drawn into diplomatic confrontation with Ukraine, or into Russia’s sanctions war with the West. Instead he is shoring up relations with the Kremlin’s nemesis.
“We are restoring our friendly political and economic relations,” Nazarbayev said, pledging to reverse a decline in trade and boost bilateral military cooperation. “Ukraine is for us a close friend and partner in politics and the economy.”
Joanna Lillis is a journalist based in Almaty and author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
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