The Central Asian Corridor Powering Russia’s Wartime Trade
- A Washington-based watchdog says Central Asia has become a major conduit for Russian sanctions evasion through trade and financial networks.
- Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are accused of facilitating the movement of dual-use goods and financial flows into Russia, though both governments deny wrongdoing.
- The report urges Western governments to intensify monitoring and sanctions enforcement targeting logistics, banking, and intermediary service providers.
Central Asian states are a key conduit for Russia’s sanctions-busting trade, enabling “logistical and financial support for diversion networks” dedicated to procuring goods for the Russian war machine, a watchdog group has documented.
A report, titled Russia’s Sanction Evasion Research 2025-2026, published by the Washington, DC-based Center for Global Civic and Political Strategies (CGCPS), notes that “Russia has demonstrated significant adaptive capacity in mitigating the operational impact of Western sanctions,” adding that Central Asia serves as a pivotal “‘back door route’ for imports into Russia.”
The report maintains that flows of “some” Common High Priority List (CHPL) commodities – items that can range from capacitors and transceivers to ball bearings and automated machine tools – increased in 2025 from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to Russia.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan “share open borders [with Russia] through the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), removing customs inspections scrutiny for intra-bloc trade,” the report states. “Western-made [dual-use] electronics, microchips, and communications equipment are imported into Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan as civilian goods, then legally exported into Russia under local trade codes.”
Central Asian governments have denied helping Russia evade sanctions, but the numbers paint a complicated picture. In Kazakhstan’s case, exports of CHPL goods to Russia shot up by over 400 percent in 2022, indicating the existence of “a systematic evasion mechanism supported by shared infrastructure and minimal oversight.” Over the past two years, however, CHPL exports from Kazakhstan to Russia have sharply fallen. Several Kazakh entities have been hit with Western sanctions in recent years.
The CGCPS report concludes that the Kazakh government is not systematically complicit in helping Russia evade sanctions, stating that the Astana’s membership in the EAEU and Kazakhstan’s long-shared border with Russia “create structural vulnerabilities that can be exploited by sanctions-evasion networks.”
Kyrgyzstan has faced scrutiny not only for funneling CHPL goods to Russia, but also for helping Russia finance its procurement efforts by offering the Kremlin access to international financial markets. The report characterizes the country as an “increasingly visible node within broader sanctions-evasion networks.”
“Analysts [in 2025] identified several Kyrgyz-registered crypto platforms as potential transit nodes for Russian-linked financial flows,” the report states. “Concerns emerged that some exchanges may have functioned as shell or successor entities to previously sanctioned digital asset platforms operating within the wider Eurasian shadow-finance network.”
US, EU and UK officials found sufficient evidence in 2025 of sanctions-busting activity that several Kyrgyz banks were sanctioned, along with the cryptocurrency exchange Grinex. In April, the EU imposed “anti-circumvention” sanctions on the Kyrgyz government as part of its 20th sanctions package.
In the Caucasus, the report notes that Georgia is “one of the most significant transit and re-export risk nodes” in the region, while Azerbaijan has served as an important logistics hub for the North-South corridor, a trade route that connects Russia to Iran, India and beyond.
The report recommends that Western sanctions enforcement mechanisms devote more “monitoring resources” to the “geographic chokepoints” of sanctions-busting activity, including in Central Asia.
The CGCPS also urges heightened scrutiny of and targeted sanctions on the financial enablers of sanctions evasion schemes, including insurance providers, legal and corporate service providers and financial institutions.
“Targeting intermediary service providers can generate broader deterrence across evasion networks,” the report states.
By Eurasianet
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