Is Russia Losing the Great Game in Central Asia?

From the top floor of Tashkent’s Hotel Uzbekistan, one of the most striking Soviet Modernist buildings in Central Asia, twenty-seven cranes can be seen stretching out against the skyline, still busy even as the sun sets on the city below. They are busy building not the Madrassas and Mosques that draw countless tourists to this country, but new glass towers of commerce – and they are funded by Chinese, Gulf and Turkish money. Below, on the city’s streets, the Russian Ladas of old have been displaced by the Chinese electric cars, with the electric “Build Your Dreams” a firm, shiny favourite. 

Meanwhile, in the country’s second city, Bukhara, a new art biennale is in full flow and with stars such as the British artist Antony Gormley and the German Carsten Höller on its rostra, its cultural lodestar is clearly pointing westward. 

It’s all part of a broader cultural shift away from Moscow’s shadow. These cranes, cars and canvases tell a larger story: Central Asia, perhaps most epitomised in what is unfolding here in Uzbekistan, is fast rebalancing its loyalties in the Great Game of the twenty-first century. And Russia is not the only one at the gaming table.

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Colonial Drift

Tashkent’s notable neutrality over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine conceals a pragmatic recalibration. Like its neighbours, Uzbekistan has neither endorsed nor condemned the invasion, but it has quietly asserted sovereignty.

In April 2025, it hosted the first EU–Central Asia summit in Samarkand, a meeting that infuriated Moscow. When the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, complained that a new World War II memorial bore inscriptions only in Uzbek and English, a high-profile Uzbek academic responded that Uzbekistan “is not a colony.” The terse responses to Lavrov symbolised a region redefining its identity. It was no longer deferential, no longer silent.

The country’s economic transformation under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has strengthened this autonomy. Since 2016, Mirziyoyev has liberalised the currency, trimmed subsidies, privatised state firms and courted foreign investment. Growth has averaged around 6 per cent annually. Construction booms at an even faster clip: 129 trillion soums (about $11 billion) of work was reported completed between January and August 2025, up nearly 8 per cent on the previous year. The state plans a new “City of the Future” east of Tashkent to house two million people across 20,000 hectares. 

Elsewhere in the region, the shift is equally as clear. Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev not only refused to endorse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but went so far as to meet Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations, backing international guarantees for Ukraine’s sovereignty. 

Closer to Europe, Armenia has suspended its defence alliance with Moscow after being left exposed in its conflict with Azerbaijan and is now seeking closer ties with Europe. Azerbaijan, for its part, has turned westward too, strengthening trade links with Turkey and welcoming Western investment in the South Caucasus corridor.

This month, the UK government lifted its long-standing arms embargo on Armenia and Azerbaijan, upgrading both countries to “strategic partners” and allowing arms exports for the first time since 1992. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are laying a trans-Caspian fibre-optic cable to link with Azerbaijan by 2026, in yet another move where Central Asia quietly decouples from Russian digital networks and it turns its technological gaze westward.

In this way, Uzbekistan’s approach exemplifies a wider pattern – something that Annette Bohr of the think-tank Chatham House calls Central Asia’s “multi-vectoring.” Regional leaders, she notes, have refined the art of telling each side what it wants to hear. With Moscow, they emphasise their fear of Western secondary sanctions; with Brussels or Washington, they stress their need for exemptions from those same sanctions and for investment to offset Russian pressure. 

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‘There’s No Point Learning Russian’

The strategy seems to be working, at least for now. By playing both sides, the ‘Stans have preserved sovereignty, attracted capital and avoided serious penalties. It’s a dexterity that means, for now, ties with Moscow have not been severed, but it has reversed the balance of dependence. 

You can’t overstate the shift, though. Central Asia’s trade with Russia has surged since 2022, as firms relocated to the region to avoid sanctions. Russia’s Lukoil and Gazprom dominate Uzbekistan’s gas fields, while Rosatom has won the bid for Kazakhstan’s first nuclear plant and has a reported agreement in place to build Uzbekistan’s. Kazakhstan still relies on Russia to export oil via pipelines, and Moscow has reversed a Soviet-era gas line to ship energy south to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Both countries are plagued by winter shortages. 

Furthermore, a new pipeline through Kazakhstan could soon send Russian gas to China, potentially offsetting up to a third of the volumes lost after Europe imposed embargoes. In 2022, Kazakhstan produced 43 per cent of the world’s uranium. A quarter of it is controlled by Russian interests.

Such realities make any divorce by the ‘Stans from their Russian forced marriage one that will involve lots of lawyers. Russia still wields economic and energy leverage. Yet politically, it is on the defensive. Leaked minutes from an April 2024 strategy session chaired by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin revealed the Kremlin’s anxiety: Moscow fears a “colonial drift” in its former dominions. 

The report, published by the Financial Times, lamented that Central Asian governments now “prioritise cultivating diverse relationships over membership in Russian-led blocs.” Even the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union has failed to expand. Kazakhstan refused to join BRICS as a full member, but Uzbekistan has.

Moscow’s influence is also eroding culturally. Soviet monuments and place-names are being quietly removed. In Kyrgyzstan, the tallest statue of Lenin in Central Asia was taken down this year. Meanwhile, Uzbek commuters were left confused after authorities in Tashkent recently abruptly renamed two metro stations without warning as part of President Islam Karimov’s wider campaign to erase Soviet-era influences from Uzbekistan.

“We were always told to be grateful to the Russians for building our infrastructure and educating our people. But increasingly there’s a desire to speak Uzbek and to rediscover our own history – especially that of Turkestan in the 1920s, when the National Liberation Movement was crushed by the Russians,” Shahida Tulaganova, a filmmaker, journalist and exiled dissident from Uzbekistan, told Byline Times. 

“Overall, it’s a positive trend. We can’t completely break away from them, unfortunately, but Uzbekistan is fortunate not to share a border with Russia, unlike Kazakhstan, which must tread carefully with its not-so-friendly neighbour.”

Younger Central Asians have shifted to speaking English or Mandarin more than Russian, and school curricula now treat Soviet rule as an episode of occupation rather than liberation. One tourist guide, Byline Times talked to spoke four languages – Spanish, Mandarin, English and Uzbek. 

“There’s no point learning Russian,” he said. “That’s the past. I look to the future.”   

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Beijing Steps In

That past is definitely fast receding. And if Russia has lost initiative, China has gained it. Beijing’s Belt and Road investments in Central Asia total nearly $67.7 billion, dwarfing Moscow’s $24 billion. Its new China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway, stretching 523 kilometres, will carry goods from Kashgar to Andijan and on to the Caspian, bypassing Russia entirely. Freight through the so-called Middle Corridor (an old Silk Road linking China to Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian, the South Caucasus and Turkey) has surged since 2022, reducing transit times to under 20 days, though costs remain up to 50 per cent higher than the northern route. 

Beijing is betting that reliability will trump price and that soft power follows the railway tracks: Confucius Institutes multiply, scholarships attract thousands of Uzbek and Kazakh students, and Chinese universities now partner with Tashkent’s new technology campuses, their adverts greeting those arriving at the International airport.

Europe has re-entered the race, too. The EU is already Central Asia’s largest investor, with €54 billion reported in trade and a further €10 billion earmarked for the Trans-Caspian transport network. Brussels’ first leaders’ summit with Central Asia, held in Samarkand this April, cemented that partnership. Europe’s motives are practical. They seek to diversify access to energy and critical minerals and reduce reliance on Russian transit, but they also confer a certain legitimacy on regimes that seek Western recognition without, perhaps, the Western lectures.

Turkey and the Gulf states are also seeking a seat at the gaming table. Ankara has doubled trade with Central Asia to $12.6 billion since 2015, built skylines from Astana to Samarkand and seemingly supplied Bayraktar TB2 drones to every Turkic republic. Saudi and Emirati funds finance solar farms, data centres and digital infrastructure, while Masdar, a UAE renewables firm, has become one of the region’s largest private investors. For the Gulf monarchies, the steppe is a proving ground for green diplomacy; for Tashkent, it is another source of funding with minimal strings attached.

All the while, Moscow’s control slips. In October 2025, Vladimir Putin used a summit in Dushanbe to plead for deeper trade integration; the combined commerce between Russia and the five Central Asian states stands at around $45 billion, less than half of their combined trade with China. The Central Asia states’ response to Putin? Reuters called it “a bland joint communique”.

Yet the outcome is entropy for Russia. Its war in Ukraine has accelerated a decolonisation already underway, as Soviet-era elites give way to younger leaders with little memory of Moscow’s dominance. For young Tashkentis, Russia is neither lodestar nor liberator but one power among several. The cranes above their city, the electric cars in its streets and the art in their galleries are symbols of that new reality. The new contest for Central Asia will not be fought with armies but with trade routes, technology and quiet diplomacy. 

Russia, finally, is losing this new great game.