Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s biggest economy, fought back on Thursday from helping its Russian ally circumvent Western sanctions, despite a sharp increase in re-exports to Russia, via third countries, of goods used by Moscow for its complex. military-industrial. .
“We will not allow the territory of our country and our companies to be used to circumvent the sanctions” imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, Maoulen Achimbayev, a representative of the Kazakh Senate, the second figure of the State, told the official. Kazinform news agency.
“We are not violating Western sanctions,” he said.
These statements come after European and US representatives accused Kazakhstan of importing and then exporting embargoed material to Russia.
Threats of sanctions
Among the products noted are refrigerators, printers and even calculators, whose electronic components can be reused to make weapons.
These accusations are leveled against other former Soviet republics, but also against China, Turkey and even the United Arab Emirates.
Kazakhstan, a close economic and military partner of Moscow, however, assured that it had launched an online monitoring system in April to control the entry and exit of goods from this huge country that shares more than 7,500 kilometers of borders with Russia.
The European Union and the United States have threatened secondary sanctions on third countries accused of helping Russia evade sanctions. But Brussels and Washington are trying to mitigate the effects of measures taken against Russia that could indirectly affect the Central Asian republics, so as not to push them further into the arms of Moscow.
In early May, the European Commission presented an eleventh package of restrictive measures against Russia aimed at preventing sanctions circumvention.
The proposal refers to 541 companies, the vast majority Russian, but includes for the first time companies from China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Syria.
Source: BFM TV
