Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 6 – Moscow and Astana, like other countries which share transborder rivers, have a long and in many cases successful history of negotiating about their flow. (For an example of this in the Kazakhstan-Russia case, see in particular, bugin.info/detail/reka-druzhby-kazakhstan-i/ru).
But Kazakhstan is profoundly affected by the flow of a river, the storied Volga, that doesn’t flow through Kazakhstan but rather feeds the Caspian Sea on which Kazakhstan depends. Now, Astana has asked for talks about its flow and some Russians are outraged by the notion that the Kazakhs should have any say on it at all.
These commentators – for examples, see the articles at versia.ru/volgu-matushku-ne-otdadim and svpressa.ru/politic/article/475638/ -- are demanding that Moscow take a hard line and reject the creation even of a working group to discuss the matter, a position that, if adopted, will only worsen relations between the two countries.
Kazakhs are likely to be furious at such a rebuff because declining flows of the Volga into the Caspian mean that that primary source of water for the inland sea is declining to the point that the northern portion of the Caspian is silting up, complicating or even blocking shipping there (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/caspian-sea-level-has-fallen-so-far.html).
The two countries have agreed to coordinate dredging operations, but they are at odds over other water issues, including most prominently the possibility of Siberian river diversion into Kazakhstan and the other countries of Central Asia. A hard line on talking about the Volga flow will exacerbate all these conflicts.
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