Ssanctions also affect those to whom they were not actually intended. For example, when a cinema operator in Kazakhstan has to close its movie theaters because foreign productions are distributed via Russia. A small price, one might think, given that the aim is to push the costs of Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine as high as possible.
But the effects on Central Asia are already clearly noticeable, and its economic systems are closely linked to Russia. Migrant workers in major Russian cities are losing their jobs, currencies are losing their value and products that previously came to the region via the Russian market are no longer being delivered. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had only just begun to recover from the consequences of the corona pandemic.