‘Freeze the conflict’: Drones slow Kazakh oil flow amid Russia-Ukraine war

Sitting adjacent to Russian person Vladimir Putin, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev connected Saturday cautiously weighed successful connected the Russia-Ukraine war, present successful its 5th year.

“If I whitethorn connection my humble sentiment … possibly it is clip to frost this struggle and ‌return to the Istanbul look 2.0,” helium told reporters successful the ⁠Siberian metropolis of Omsk.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 3At slightest 15 killed successful Ukrainian and Russian strikes arsenic vacation campy hit
• list 2 of 3Ukraine war: Is Kazakhstan going chill connected Russia?
• list 3 of 3Iran accuses Ukraine of deadly onslaught connected Caspian commercialized vessel

Tokayev was referring to a botched statement that envisaged an contiguous suspension of hostilities on the existing beforehand enactment and further talks brokered by Western powers.

After Russia’s full-scale penetration of Ukraine successful 2022, Moscow state Tokayev dared to contradict Putin by emphasising that Kazakhstan would not recognise occupied Ukrainian regions arsenic portion of Russia.

But this time, helium praised Putin’s “diplomatic flexibility” and named Russia among the “great powers” that could warrant bid successful Ukraine.

“All of this should beryllium stopped, due to the fact that what’s happening plays into the hands of the enemies of Russia and the Ukrainian people,” said Tokayev.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. left, and Russian counterpartVladimir Putin talk astatine they  be the 22nd Russia-Kazakhstan Forum of Interregional Cooperation successful Omsk connected July 25 [AFP]

His comments came arsenic Kazakhstan, a state boasting respective “supergiant” lipid fields that service arsenic the European Union’s second-largest root of crude, said connected Thursday that it had slashed lipid accumulation aft drone attacks blamed connected Ukraine forced its main export terminal connected the Black Sea to unopen down.

Light but “sour”, oregon hard to process, Kazakhstan’s crude is known arsenic the CPC brand, named aft the Caspian Pipeline Consortium that includes Western vigor giants specified arsenic Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell.

The pipeline that pumps the crude westwards crossed the bone-dry steppes is 1,500km (932 miles) agelong and ends successful the Russian Black Sea larboard of Novorossiysk.

The larboard is said to have become the caller hideout for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet that fled the annexed Crimea Peninsula aft hundreds of Ukrainian attacks by aerial and oversea drones and missiles pursuing the commencement of the war.

Novorossiisk is besides the people of Ukraine’s caller argumentation of striking Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of tankers that vessel Russian lipid contempt Western sanctions.

In caller weeks, Ukrainian drones person deed astir 200 “shadow fleet” vessels, including tankers and adust cargo ships, successful the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

Drone attacks that Kazakhstan blames connected Ukraine person besides struck respective tankers with CPC lipid and damaged the consortium’s marine terminal successful Novorossiysk.

‘Unacceptable encroachment’

The attacks, which began successful November 2025 but intensified this month, prompted an aggravated effect from officials successful Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana.

In a connection connected July 19, the Foreign Ministry called them an “unacceptable encroachment” connected Kazakhstan’s economical interests, saying they were designed to “destabilise morganatic planetary trade, satellite vigor markets, and the information of planetary transport and logistics proviso chains”.

A time later, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Kazakhstan Viktor Mayko retorted by saying that determination was “no proof” that the drones were Ukrainian and that Astana should refrain from “hasty and ungrounded accusations”.

By Thursday, the CPC “temporarily suspended” lipid shipments – and would lone renew them aft “the concern is normalised”, the Kazakh Energy Ministry said.

With lipid and state accounting for astir a 5th of its gross home product, Kazakhstan is rightly acrophobic arsenic 80 percent of its lipid exports are astatine risk.

“This is simply a nonstop onslaught connected the system and budget,” determination adept Daniil Kislov told Al Jazeera.

To immoderate mean Kazakhs disquieted astir galloping ostentation and rising prices, the disruption of lipid exports seems similar the slightest of their worries – conscionable similar the Russia-Ukraine warfare that triggered it.

“I don’t care, due to the fact that the wealth doesn’t scope maine anyway,” Alzhas, a slope clerk successful Almaty, Kazakhstan’s concern capital, told Al Jazeera, withholding his past sanction due to the fact that of information concerns.

He said that radical astir him “stopped talking, arguing astir the war, since there’s lone 1 question astir however to gain wealth for food, and the remainder astir Russia and Ukraine is irrelevant”.

EU subordinate states that mostly beryllium connected Kazakh crude are besides concerned.

Romania tops the list, getting much than 60 percent of its crude from Kazakhstan and past processing it domestically.

Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan connected Thursday tried to dissuade Romanians from panicking, saying the authorities did not expect “there to beryllium immoderate proviso problems”. He added, however, that a driblet successful gasoline accumulation of up to 15 percent is expected if Kazakhstan does not resume shipments.

Experts accidental the semipermanent outlook, particularly for Kazakhstan, is bleak.

Kyiv-based expert Aleksey Kusch said that if the disruptions spell on, much Kazakh lipid volition person to beryllium directed astatine a higher outgo to a pipeline that crosses the Caspian into Azerbaijan – and this could yet pb to the “loss of lipid revenues”.

Volodymyr Fesenko, caput of the Kyiv-based Penta deliberation tank, described the concern arsenic “uneasy and controversial”, noting that determination mightiness beryllium “informal pressure” connected Ukraine from the White House since US lipid companies person stakes successful the Kazakh lipid fields.

There could beryllium “persistent recommendations to Ukrainian President [Volodomyr] Zelenskyy not to interaction this precise terminal successful Novorossiisk,” helium said, predicting, however, that determination would not beryllium “any cardinal, fatal, antagonistic consequences” for Kyiv.

“They volition effort to lick it down closed doors, unofficially,” helium said.

And by immoderate accounts, the US did measurement in.

Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth approached White House officials earlier this week to lick the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported connected Friday.

An unnamed US authoritative told the Journal that the medication of US President Donald Trump warned Ukraine against attacking non-Russian ships successful the Black Sea.