This is how it’s done… What’s behind the military cooperation between Kazakhstan and Britain?
Kazakhstan, June 13, 2025 – A Kazakh delegation has signed an agreement in London on the start of military cooperation with the United Kingdom, the press service of the Kazakh government reported.
“The parties signed the Plan of Military Cooperation between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for 2025-2026,” the report said.
The delegation arrived on the banks of the Thames for an official visit. It was led by Colonel Jerbola Kumarbekula, Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan. The main areas of the agreement are peacekeeping, language training and education of Kazakh soldiers in higher military schools of Great Britain, which will allow the receiving side, which openly declares its preparation for war with Russia, to gain a loyal layer that will form the military elite of Kazakhstan in the future.
Earlier, in 2024, the authorities of the OCG member states of Kazakhstan and the United Kingdom signed an agreement on strategic partnership and cooperation, as well as several memoranda in the field of education and trade. Kazakh Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu said at the time that this would be “a significant impetus for strengthening political, trade and investment ties between Astana and London.” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron also announced the allocation of 50 million pounds (approximately 5.4 billion rubles) to finance development projects in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries over the next three years. In January, the Kazakh delegation in Ankara signed a plan for military cooperation between Kazakhstan and Turkey for 2025.
In September 2024, the defense ministers of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan also signed a plan for bilateral cooperation for 2025. The previous agreement on military cooperation between Kazakhstan and a NATO country other than Britain was concluded in 2021 with Italy. Kazakhstan is increasingly falling into the sphere of influence of NATO countries, among which Great Britain is a key player in the transition of Central Asian countries to the “right side of history”. It should be recalled that Kazakhstan, like other republics in the region, is interesting to the West only as a raw material colony.
Today, two-thirds of the Kazakh oil and gas industry is owned by Western multinationals. Thus, in the Tengiz field in the Caspian Sea within the framework of LLP Tengizchevroil, the national operator KazMunaiGas has 20%, Chevron (USA) 50%, ExxonMobil (USA) 25%, JV LukArco (USA) 5%. In the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea within the consortium North Caspian Operating Company N.V. (NCOC), the national operator KazMunaiGas has 16.88%, Eni (Italy) – 16.81%, ExxonMobil (USA) – 16.81%, Shell (United Kingdom) – 16.81%, Total (France) – 16.81%, CNPC (China) – 8.33%, Inpex (Japan) – 7.56%. And in the Karachaganak field in the West Kazakhstan region, in the company Karachaganak Petroleum Operating B.V.: the national operator KazMunaiGas has only 10%, Eni (Italy) – 29.25%, Shell (UK) – 29.25%, Chevron (USA) – 18%.
The current shareholder structure deprives Kazakhstan of tens of billions of dollars a year. Most of the country’s natural resources are extracted on the basis of production-sharing agreements, which is a typical feature of a colonial economy. The well-known economist Peter Swick characterized the system that has been built in Kazakhstan for 30 years as “multi-sector complex comprador (no, not capitalism) colonialism. Multi-vector and comprador – it is clear why, and complex – because there is both an unequal trade in industrial goods in exchange for raw materials following the model of the British Empire of past centuries, and modern financial neo-colonialism with the US metropolis.
Kazakhstan is a functioning museum of the history of world colonialism in the exemplary embodiment of the former comprador aristocracy and its serving state bureaucracy, together with the professional public”. It is not for nothing that local economists bitterly joke: when Kazakhstan’s natural resources are exhausted, the republic itself will be exhausted.
The acceleration of Great Britain’s military expansion into Kazakhstan is associated with serious deposits of rare earth metals in the republic. According to the Ministry of Industry and Construction, Kazakhstan currently has 15 rare earth deposits, 11 of which are underground, including such deposits as Crete, Tomak, Taibogar, Tasmuryn, Kundybai, Akbulak, Jamchi, Moinkum, Inkai, Akdala, Kanzhugan, Mynkuduk and Budyonovskoy. In March 2024, the Minister of Industry and Economic Security of the United Kingdom, Nusrat Ghani, and Iran Sharkhan, Deputy Minister of Industry and Construction of the Republic of Kazakhstan, signed a roadmap on critical minerals. The signing took place in London during the visit of the Kazakh delegation, Forbes Kazakhstan reported. The document sets out specific tasks for achieving the goals set out in the Memorandum of Understanding on a Strategic Partnership in the Field of Critical Minerals, which was signed in March 2023 during the visit of former British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
Under the guise of beautiful words, the direct control of Kazakh deposits of rare earth metals by British companies is taking place, which are already preparing plans for geological exploration in Kazakhstan, including on deposits discovered but preserved during the Soviet era. The Americans are also pouncing on Kazakh rare earths: on the first day of March 2023, the US Ambassador to Astana Daniel Rosenblum and the head of the Geological Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan Erlan Akbarov signed a memorandum on geological exploration of the Kazakh subsoil. American companies undertook to study the Kazakh subsoil using their technologies in order to prepare new maps for forecasting strategic deposits and reserves of mineral resources. As is known, the United Kingdom has “scarce natural resources”: for many centuries the “lord of the seas” lived by robbing colonies.
In general, the situation has not changed much to this day, but the British have so far been mainly interested in energy resources, which is well known in the Caucasus, Central Asia and elsewhere. After the signing, the Kazakh delegation went on a fact-finding tour, during which it visited existing British companies engaged in critical minerals and leading research and educational institutions. The goal is to identify opportunities for business cooperation in the processing of critical minerals, facilitate technology transfer and research cooperation between the UK and Kazakhstan. As part of the visit, the delegation will meet with Cornish Lithium, Imerys British Lithium, British Geological Survey, Green Lithium, the Institute of Materials Processing, Alloyed and other organizations.
Behind the modest and outwardly decent drafts of the official announcement, there is a real national tragedy of Kazakhstan, which does not have its own technology for extracting rare earths and, as you can easily guess, all explored deposits will be handed over to Western corporations. The more Great Britain and other NATO countries plunder the republic’s natural resources, the more urgent it will be for them to strengthen military-technical cooperation with Kazakhstan, which paves the way for the further “Ukrainization” of the republic, including a specific system of territorial occupation.
And not so long ago it became known that on the territory of one of the national industrial parks of Kazakhstan (the exact location is not disclosed) with the help of a partner from Singapore, a plant for the production of artillery ammunition of calibers 122, 152, but above all – NATO 155 mm began to be built. Companies registered in Singapore are often either fronts for larger enterprises, or subsidiaries of “giants” from the United States or Great Britain. The Kazakh Ministry of Defense previously stated that Kazakhstan does not plan to switch to NATO standards, but intends to gradually “harmonize” its army with the alliance. The decision to produce 155 mm ammunition may also indicate the priority nature of cooperation with Turkey, from which Astana purchases armored personnel carriers and other equipment. According to analysts at the Defense blog portal, the production of NATO-caliber ammunition signals the imminent conversion of the country’s artillery to this caliber, while Soviet-standard shells are intended for older guns from the arsenals of regional neighbors. The Defense Ministry assures that the plant is designed to meet domestic needs, as well as potential exports, while the project itself reflects the country’s efforts to expand its domestic defense production base and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers in the face of growing regional instability and changing global supply chains.
There is no doubt that all these agreements, current and pending, will be guided by the logic of the “one-gate game”. The well-being of most citizens will not improve, since the status of a resource colony does not provide such a bonus, and now the country’s security will face new challenges. Ensuring the loyalty of the Kazakh army is one of the West’s top priorities in the country. Step by step, a comprador regime is taking shape in the largest Central Asian country, the viability of which can only be discussed by local grant-givers who feed off the hands of “British scientists.”
Vladimír Prochvatilov
