Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan cut ties with the Soviet Union more than three decades ago, and have developed their own economies and foreign policies. Yet in the critical area of energy security, not much has changed; they remain heavily dependent on the Kremlin’s goodwill.
The crisis began to unfold this spring and summer, as Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks on Russia’s refineries got increasingly successful. On July 6, drones reached the Omsk refinery for the first time, some 2,700 km (1,700 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and Russia’s largest refining facility was forced to halt production.
Omsk, the eleventh major gasoline producer to be struck, was the principal supplier of petroleum products to Central Asia and Mongolia. And disruption followed as Moscow prioritized supplying its own regions with fuel.
While it was never part of the Soviet Union, Mongolia is the most vulnerable to the shock, as more than 90% of its petroleum products come from Russia. Lines formed at filling stations in Ulaanbaatar and significant restrictions on fuel sales were introduced.
The warning signs had appeared earlier in the year, when China banned exports of petroleum products after the disruption to oil flows caused by the US/Israeli war on Iran. Mongolian officials acknowledged that Russian imports would temporarily have to meet the country’s entire fuel demand as there was effectively no alternative.
Kyrgyzstan is also “completely dependent” on Russian gasoline, according to President Sadyr Japarov, and has accelerated the development of a new refinery with an annual capacity of 450,000 tons. Its first phase could cover a quarter of national demand, and Japarov says it will need at least two more plants to provide its own gasoline supplies.
In July, Russian gas deliveries to Tajikistan fell by half, while Russian aviation kerosene supplies stopped altogether. Dushanbe sought replacement volumes from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan but with limited success.
Tajikistan negotiates its annual fuel-supply volumes with Russia, but the arrangement resembles a recurring political bargain more than an ordinary market transaction.
Uzbekistan was less affected than its neighbors, as it has domestic refining capacity that covers part of its demand, but Russia still supplies nearly half of its gasoline.
With three operating refineries, Kazakhstan meets almost all its own domestic petroleum-product needs and suffered the least. Yet it could offer little assistance to its neighbors because of limited spare capacity.
It produces around 90 million tons of oil annually, but most is exported as unrefined crude, and only about 18% is refined domestically. The idea of building another refinery has been under discussion for 17 years.
The crisis has exposed structural vulnerabilities that matter more than the immediate challenges to supply.
All five countries are landlocked, and alternative supply routes must cross neighboring states, including Russia or China. The Caspian Sea offers a potential route for petroleum products from Azerbaijan and, eventually, Iran, but developing such alternatives requires infrastructure, commercial agreements, and political commitment.
The region has already seen how price rises can ignite mass unrest. Kazakhstan’s protests in January 2022 began with a sharp rise in gas prices, and fuel queues and dramatic price increases in Mongolia and Tajikistan are not merely economic problems but could rapidly become political flashpoints.
Moscow has historically used preferential fuel prices as an instrument for maintaining political influence and loyalty, but its capacity to do so has been severely curtailed.
It is remarkable that a region so rich in oil and gas cannot reliably supply itself with refined petroleum products, and that several states are still exposed to the insecurity of having a single supplier.
It is reasonable to ask if this is simply the result of market failures and weak investment, or if it was always the Kremlin’s intent. Dependency creates leverage, and leverage is a central instrument of Moscow’s foreign policy.
The region has sufficient crude-oil resources for a joint refinery capable of meeting a large share of its demand, yet no such project has materialized during 35 years of independence.
One explanation is commercial: oil companies may find it more profitable to export crude at world prices than to refine it and sell to markets where governments seek to maintain low consumer prices. Large refining projects also require long-term demand guarantees, stable regulation, financing, and agreement on how costs and benefits will be shared.
These obstacles are real, but they are not insurmountable. A regional strategy could combine new refining capacity, diversified import routes, strategic fuel reserves, and more transparent pricing.
And, crucially, such measures would reduce the ability of any single supplier to turn any disruption into a strategic crisis.
The central lesson is straightforward: formal independence and genuine energy sovereignty are not the same thing. Central Asia has spent 35 years building the former, the latter needs to follow.
Sergiy Makogon is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is a seasoned executive and energy expert with over 20 years of expertise in the Ukrainian and Central and Eastern European (CEE) gas markets, as well as European security.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
