Kazakhstan Navy Demonstrates Growing Capacity to Repel Any Attacker -- Including Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 22 – Ships of the growing Kazakhstan navy on the Caspian have just completed a seven-day exercise in which they demonstrated, with  the support of Kazakhstan aircraft, the ability to repel any foreign country that might attack that country from its Caspian littoral (gov.kz/memleket/entities/mod/press/news/details/853950).

            Kazakhstan now has more naval vessels on the Caspian than any other littoral state, including the Russian Federation, although its ships are generally smaller and less heavily armed than Russia’s (jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/).

            But Astana is certainly worried about the possibility of a Russian attack on its territory from the sea and has been engaged in a naval build up for the last several years. (For background on that, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/kazakhstan-begins-building-caspian-fleet.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/05/kazakhstan-increasingly-preparing-its.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/kazakhstan-conducts-major-naval.html.)