Paul Taylor is a contributing editor at POLITICO.
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — “Don’t mention the war!”
Uzbekistan’s state-funded Islamic religious authority, the mufti, recently instructed its imams not to speak about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in their normally non-political Friday sermons. In this central Asian republic, mosques have ears.
Prayer leaders who criticize, or praise, Russian military action can now expect to be reminded not to repeat the mistake. Meanwhile, Uzbek television stations and newspapers carry little coverage of the war, although Russia’s state-controlled channels are ubiquitous in this bilingual country of 35 million, spreading Moscow’s self-serving narrative.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing assault on his neighbor is acutely sensitive in this most populous of the five so-called “stans” — once conjoined with Russia and Ukraine in the Soviet Union — as three decades after gaining its independence from Moscow, Tashkent remains economically and geopolitically dependent on its big brother to the north.
More than 3 million Uzbeks, around 15 percent of the working age population, currently labor in Russia, mainly in poorly paid menial jobs in the construction and service sectors. They are among the army of street sweepers and snow removers toiling in Moscow and St. Petersburg for paltry wages. Still, their remittances are a vital of income for their families back home — and of foreign exchange for the government. But some have started returning home since the war and sanctions hit Russia’s economy.
At the same time, the dazzling turquoise-domed monuments and bazaars of Samarkand and Bukhara, on the historic Silk Road from China to Europe, are teeming with Russian tourists. This is one of the few attractive destinations still open to them, now that they’re effectively shut out of the fleshpots of Europe and North America, except for Turkey and Serbia. Their rubles are welcome in Uzbek restaurants and market stalls, where traders and waiters speak fluent Russian rather than English.
For his part, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has tried to open the economy to foreign investment since taking power in 2016, has been observing a studied neutrality when it comes to Russia’s invasion, calling for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. Uzbekistan was among the countries that abstained on U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning the invasion and annexation of swathes of Ukrainian territory, but it has also issued statements supporting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states. In March, Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov said that to achieve a peaceful solution, “it is necessary first to bring an end to the military activities and aggression.”
While Kazakhstan and Georgia have taken in hundreds of thousands of Russian draft-dodgers, there are currently no official figures for the sizable number of Russians who’ve sought sanctuary in Uzbekistan since the war began. Tashkent allows Russians to stay for up to 90 days without a visa, and the government has said it won’t deport those who came to avoid Putin’s partial mobilization order.
As new arrivals from Russia scramble for shelter, however, the Tashkent rental market is now red hot. One landlord reported being offered three times the current rent by a real estate agent if he ejected his Uzbek tenants and let his apartment to a Russian instead. He refused.
The price of one-way flights from Moscow to Tashkent spiked to nearly $10,000 after Putin announced the call-up in September but has now fallen back. Hotels and AirBnB short-term rentals are packed too.
Following media reports of migrant workers being either press-ganged or offered fast-track Russian citizenship if they enlist, Uzbekistan has warned its own citizens against participating in the conflict, along with the governments of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Reports of Uzbeks being detained by Ukraine on the battlefield or killed in the fighting have stirred public concern.
In September, Mirziyoyev hosted a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and leaders of other Asian nations, including Iran and India, in Samarkand. He also attended meetings with leaders of former Soviet states in St. Petersburg and the Kazakh capital, Nursultan. In a setback for Kremlin diplomacy, however, none of those high-level gatherings issued any endorsement of the Russian assault. Moreover, central Asian leaders were wary of Putin’s requests to help Moscow evade Western sanctions by serving as new supply routes, fearing secondary sanctions on themselves.
On the sidelines of the Samarkand summit, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed a landmark agreement to push ahead with building a railroad linking their countries, which — if completed — will establish a shorter route to Europe, bypassing Russia. Previously, lines to the outside world from this double-landlocked nation only went through Russia, which built the first Uzbek railway in the 19th century to transport cotton and minerals to its own market.
But Beijing overtook Moscow as the biggest source of foreign investment in Uzbekistan in 2021, with foreign direct investment worth $2.2 billion, compared to $2.1 billion from Russia. Uzbekistan now exports as much to China as it does to Russia, and its imports from China dwarf all other suppliers.
Overall, it seems that the war has loosened Russia’s grip on Central Asia, at least temporarily, and reduced its ability to keep a lid on conflicts between former Soviet republics or prevent them from drifting into China’s orbit.
For example, while Moscow was preoccupied with Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan fought border clashes in April. Then Azerbaijan took advantage of the Kremlin’s distraction to attack Armenian border areas in September, killing dozens of Armenian soldiers.
With access to impartial information limited, many ordinary Uzbeks still support Russia and think Moscow is winning in Ukraine, a veteran Uzbek political journalist said, requesting anonymity. “However, those who are in the know, the elites with access to a VPN or Western TV channels, understand that Russia is in trouble in Ukraine, and they see dangers and some potential opportunities for Uzbekistan,” he added.
The biggest danger would be a collapse of the Russian economy, or political disorder that could endanger the jobs and physical safety of Uzbeks living in Russia. That would have severe knock-on effects on the livelihoods of families in Uzbekistan, especially if more long-term migrant workers are forced to return home.
On the upside, the senior journalist said, defeat in Ukraine would probably remove any appetite for reconquering the former Russian empire in Central Asia. Beyond that, some Uzbek officials now see greater opportunities to build economic, infrastructure and political relations with China, playing the field between Moscow, Beijing and the West.