‘Maximally pragmatic’: How Central Asia navigates Russia’s war on Ukraine

Most leaders tread a careful line to avoid conflict as Moscow tries to uphold its relevance in a vast neighbourhood.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan – A separatist warlord turned Russian lawmaker said he wasn’t “kidding around” when calling for Moscow to annex Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations whose citizens flock north in search of jobs.

“I sincerely stand for a simple annexation of all territories labour migrants come to us from, for teaching them Russian right where they are. Not here, but in Uzbekistan, for example,” Zakhar Prilepin, a novelist who fought for separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region and now co-chairs A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin socialist party, told a news conference in Moscow in December.

Prilepin’s statement prompted immediate rebuttals from Tashkent and Moscow.

“Opinions voiced with such insolence contradict international law and common sense,” Uzbek lawmaker Inomjon Kudratov wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Prilepin’s words “don’t even remotely reflect Russia’s official position,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, as she praised the “comprehensive, strategic alliance” between Moscow and Tashkent.

In the two years since Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all five nations of ex-Soviet Central Asia modified “alliances” with Moscow and other powers – to benefit from them economically and politically.

The resource-rich Muslim region of 75 million – consisting of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan- is straddled strategically between Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan, and its leaders have to navigate their way in such a varied neighbourhood.

Ostracised and hobbled by Western sanctions, Russia tries to keep its waning clout