PSCRP-BESA Reports No 155 (September 28, 2025)
At the United Nations General Assembly this year, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov did not disguise where Bishkek’s loyalties lie. In his speech, he castigated Western sanctions on Kyrgyz banks and reaffirmed that his country would not sever ties with Russia. That intervention was not just diplomatic theater. It was a blunt reminder that Kyrgyzstan’s leadership views Moscow not as an optional partner but as the central axis of its political and economic survival.
The sanctions Japarov decried point to the deeper problem. In 2025, Washington and London sanctioned a Kyrgyz bank acquired by a company linked to Ilan Shor, the Moldovan oligarch and convicted bank fraudster with strong ties to the Kremlin. Shor, wanted in Moldova and sanctioned by the U.S. and EU, has reinvented himself as a political operator and fixer for Moscow. According to The Insider, he has offered gifts and cultivated ties with Kyrgyz elites, including providing Japarov with a private jet. More critically, Shor’s networks have been implicated in sanction-evasion schemes, including the use of crypto tokens pegged to the Russian ruble to facilitate cross-border transfers. His involvement in Kyrgyz financial institutions allowed Moscow to reroute transactions through Bishkek at a time when conventional channels were closing. For Washington and Brussels, this was an unacceptable breach; for Japarov, it was apparently a matter of business as usual. His public defense of Kyrgyz banks after the sanctions landed signaled that Bishkek was not only aware of these arrangements but prepared to shield them from international scrutiny.
The financial entanglement dovetails with deep industrial dependence. Russia’s Inter RAO Export is in active negotiations to build a 500-megawatt thermal power plant in Kyrgyzstan, an undertaking that would cement the country’s reliance on Russian capital, equipment, and fuels for decades. The project is not isolated. Moscow and Bishkek are also advancing plans to expand transmission capacity and modernize the national grid. Within the next two years, Russia plans to finish the construction of a solar power plant (SPP) in Kyrgyzstan. There’s another project to build a wind farm with the help of Rosatom in the Central Asian republic. For Kyrgyzstan, where energy shortages are perennial, these projects are politically indispensable. But they come at the price of sovereignty: Kyrgyzstan’s future power supply would be bound by Russian financing and Russian conditions.
The cultural and linguistic sphere is no less saturated by Russian influence. Far from phasing out Moscow’s imprint, Bishkek has deepened it. This year, Kyrgyzstan and Russia launched new cultural initiatives, including digitization of libraries, training for cultural workers, and expanded quotas for Kyrgyz students at Russian universities. Deputy Prime Minister Edil Baisalov went further, explicitly assuring the public that Russian would remain an official language. The decision is not symbolic. Russian is not just a lingua franca in urban Kyrgyzstan; it is the language of commerce, higher education, and labor migration. As hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz citizens work in Russia each year, remittances flow home through Russian-language contracts, Russian banks, and Russian bureaucracies. Maintaining Russian as an official language means maintaining direct access to those lifelines — and keeping Kyrgyz elites fluent in the language of their patron.
For Moscow, these policies are the essence of soft power: a guarantee that Kyrgyzstan’s next generation will continue to think, study, and work in Russian. For Bishkek, they are a political calculation: dismantling the Russian language’s official status would risk alienating Moscow at a moment when the country’s economy cannot afford the blow.
Russia’s ambitions in Kyrgyzstan extend well beyond energy and language. Moscow has positioned itself as the indispensable partner for cultural policy, higher education, defense cooperation, and infrastructure. Russian universities provide scholarships for Kyrgyz students, binding the country’s professional class to Russian institutions. Security coordination, though less publicized, also continues through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Kyrgyzstan is a member. These mechanisms ensure that Bishkek’s maneuvering room remains narrow, whatever the rhetoric of sovereignty.
And yet, Kyrgyzstan is not entirely passive. In late 2024, Bishkek finally broke ground on the long-delayed China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway, a major Belt and Road Initiative project aiming to connect China with Central Asia and Europe. When completed, the corridor could carry up to 15 million tons of cargo annually, linking Central Asia directly to Chinese markets and bypassing traditional Russian-controlled routes. For Kyrgyzstan, the project is a lifeline to diversification. For Beijing, it is another spoke in its Belt and Road strategy. But construction will take years, and financing remains uncertain. For now, the railway is a promise of future autonomy; Russia’s influence is the present reality.
The picture that emerges is not of a state balancing two powers with equal dexterity, but of a client state tethered to Moscow while cautiously entertaining Beijing’s overtures. Kyrgyzstan’s leadership, financial system, industry, and cultural policies are all structured in ways that prioritize Russian interests. China may be gaining ground with long-term infrastructure, but it has yet to dislodge Russia’s dominant position.
For Western policymakers, the implications should be clear. Treating Central Asia as an immutable Russian sphere of influence is a strategic mistake. It ensures that Moscow will retain control by default and that Beijing will only expand its presence unchallenged. Kyrgyzstan’s case shows both the risks and the opportunities: a country whose dependence on Russia is entrenched, but whose leaders are pragmatic enough to accept alternatives if they are offered. The West’s failure to invest politically and financially in the region is not neutrality — it is abandonment. And abandonment leaves Central Asia with only two choices: Moscow’s grip or Beijing’s embrace.
PSCRP team