First it was Russian civilians who came to Central Asia to avoid being swept up in their government’s disastrous war in Ukraine.
 
More recently, it is the Kremlin that has come to see the region as a way out of the corner into which it has driven the country.
 
What is intriguing about this development is that it complicates and undermines an emerging narrative that many in the West appear to find comforting; one in which former Soviet satellites in Central Asia are slowly but surely turning away from Moscow.
 
When Moscow launched its invasion, policymakers in Europe scrambled to find alternative ways of sourcing natural gas. Russia is looking south to remedy that sudden disappearance of a lucrative market.
 
Unaccountably, given that they are rich in gas themselves, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are poised to become consumers of the Russian fuel.
 
That is just for starters. Last week, President Vladimir Putin held long discussions with the head of state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom, Alexei Miller, to discuss the “restructuring of logistics routes [and] the securing of a foothold in new markets.”
 
It seems likely Putin had Iran, Pakistan, and India, among others, in mind. Central Asia will be key to this reorientation strategy. Turkmenistan has already given indications it will be an eager partner in making this happen.
 
Eurasianet has devoted considerable attention to something called the Middle Corridor. To put it crudely, that is the name given to a series of Asia-to-Europe transportation routes bypassing Russia.
 
Moscow is busy on this front too, however. 
 
State-owned Russian Railways, or RZhD, is hard at work upgrading a north-south transport corridor, the route that would give Russian exporters overland access to the subcontinent. RZhD has said it is reducing fares to encourage uptake. Russian railway executives say the goal is to increase annual exports along the route, which takes in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, to 5 million tons.
 
The Caspian Sea may get a lot more crowded too, as Putin hinted in a sprawling anti-Western address to the Federal Assembly this week.
 
“Already from this year, ships with a draft of at least 4.5 meters will be able to pass through the Volga-Caspian Canal. This will open up new routes for business cooperation with India, Iran, Pakistan, and countries in the Middle East,” he said. 
 
Turkmenistan will hope that the high-tech seaport it built in 2018 in its city of Turkmenbashi can capitalize on this traffic. 
 
Russia's South Asia pivot is happening. And Central Asia is key to its success. 
 
-Peter Leonard