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Sitting next to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Saturday carefully monitored the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which is in its fifth year.
“If I can give my humble opinion… maybe it’s time to end this dispute and return to Istanbul formula 2.0,” he told reporters in the Siberian city of Omsk.
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Tokayev was referring to an informal agreement that envisages an immediate cessation of hostilities on the current front and other negotiations led by Western countries.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow’s ally Tokayev dared to contradict Putin by emphasizing that Kazakhstan. they wouldn’t notice He took over the territories of Ukraine as part of Russia.
But this time, he praised Putin’s “diplomatic flexibility” and named Russia among the “major powers” that could ensure peace in Ukraine.
“All this must be stopped, because what is happening plays into the hands of the enemies of Russia and the people of Ukraine,” Tokayev said.
His comments came as Kazakhstan, which boasts dozens of “superior” oil fields that serve as the European Union’s second-largest oil producer, said on Thursday it had cut oil production after drone strikes in Ukraine forced its Black Sea export facilities to close.
Light but “sour”, or difficult to process, Kazakhstan’s crude oil is known as CPC, which is part of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium which includes Western energy giants such as Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell.
The pipeline that pumps west of the Dry Mountains is 1,500km (932 miles) and ends at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
Doko says they will be The new hideout of the Russian Black Sea Fleet that fled the Crimean Peninsula after the invasion of Ukraine hundreds of naval drones and missiles after the start of the war.
Novorossiisk is also the target of Ukraine’s new policy of targeting “shadow” Moscow tankers that transport Russian oil despite Western sanctions.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have hit nearly 200 “shadow” vessels, including tankers and dry cargo ships, in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
Drone attacks that Kazakhstan blames on Ukraine have also hit several CPC oil tankers and damaged the Consortium’s naval base in Novorossiysk.
‘Unacceptable interference’
The attacks, which began in November 2025 but escalated this month, prompted an angry response from officials in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana.
In a statement on July 19, the Ministry of Finance called it an “unacceptable interference” in the economy of Kazakhstan, saying that it was designed to “disrupt the legitimate international trade, the global energy markets, as well as the security of international transport and transportation”.
A day later, Ukrainian Ambassador to Kazakhstan Viktor Mayko responded that there was “no evidence” that the drones were Ukrainian and that Astana should refrain from “hasty and baseless claims”.
As of Thursday, the CPC had “temporarily suspended” oil shipments – and would only resume them “once things stabilize”, the Kazakh Energy Ministry said.
With oil and gas accounting for one-fifth of all domestic resources, Kazakhstan is worried that 80 percent of its oil exports are at risk.
“This is a direct hit to the economy and the budget,” regional expert Daniil Kislov told Al Jazeera.
For some Kazakhs who are worried about inflation and rising prices, the disruption of oil exports seems to be their concern – just like the Russia-Ukraine war that caused it.
“I don’t care, because the money doesn’t reach me,” Alzhas, a bank clerk in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s business capital, told Al Jazeera, not giving his last name for security reasons.
He also said that people around him “stopped talking, arguing about the war, since there is only one question of how to get money to buy food, and other things about Russia and Ukraine are not important”.
EU member states that rely heavily on Kazakh crude are also worried.
Romania tops the list, importing more than 60 percent of Kazakhstan’s products and processing them in the country.
Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan on Thursday tried to dissuade Romanians from panicking, saying the government did not expect “any problems”. He added that a drop in oil prices of up to 15 percent is expected if Kazakhstan does not resume exports.
Experts say the long-term outlook, especially in Kazakhstan, is bleak.
Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kusch said that if the disruption continues, more Kazakh oil will have to be transported at a higher price through the pipeline that crosses the Caspian to Azerbaijan – and this could lead to a “loss of oil revenues”.
Volodymyr Fesenko, who is the CEO of Penta from Kyiv, described the situation as “unpleasant and controversial”, saying that there could be “difficulties” in Ukraine from the White House since US oil companies have a stake in Kazakh oil fields.
There could be “permanent mandates for the President of Ukraine (Volodomyr) Zelenskyy not to affect this in Novorossiisk,” he said, predicting, however, that there would be no “cardinal, dangerous, bad” events for Kyiv.
“They will try to end the closed doors, unofficially,” he said.
And with other issues, the US intervened.
Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth approached White House officials earlier this week to resolve the issue, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
An unnamed US official told the Journal that US President Donald Trump’s administration had warned Ukraine against attacking non-Russian ships in the Black Sea.
