Both Yerevan and Astana are seeking to move beyond their traditional dependence on Russia and maintain multi-vector foreign policies.
At first glance, Armenia and Kazakhstan appear to have little in common. Armenia is a small South Caucasus state of three million people, ethnically homogenous and politically vibrant. It has limited natural resources and a complex security environment. Kazakhstan is the largest economy in Central Asia, a resource-rich country with an ethnically diverse population of twenty million people. It is the ninth largest country in the world, stretching from the Caspian Sea to China and getting along with all its neighbors.
Despite these differences, the two countries face the same strategic questions. How can they foster sovereignty and prosperity in fragmented Eurasia, amid conflict zones and geopolitical rivalries? How can they combine their de jure allied relations with Russia with deeper partnerships with the European Union and the United States? Remarkably, their responses are similar. With a change of course in Armenia, both countries increasingly see the solution in diversification, connectivity, hedging, and peace-building, and position themselves as connectors between regions and markets.
In an era of growing geopolitical fragmentation, they are pursuing a common objective: transforming geography into an asset, connectivity into a source of strategic influence, and diversification into a mechanism for preserving sovereignty. Such a convergence of the foreign policy and development approaches of Armenia and Kazakhstan can create synergies between the two countries and, if solidified and successful, could carry great promise for the Caspian region and Eurasia at large.
Armenia’s June 2026 parliamentary election effectively served as a public endorsement of a foreign policy centered on diversification, strategic flexibility, and engagement with multiple international partners. The victory of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan confirmed that a substantial portion of Armenian society supports a course toward closer ties with Europe and the United States while maintaining pragmatic relations with regional powers.
The election also reflected a broader reassessment of Armenia’s external partnerships following the security shocks of 2020–2023. The Second Karabakh War and the collapse of Armenian control over Nagorno-Karabakh profoundly influenced public attitudes. Many Armenians remain disappointed by what they perceive as Russia’s limited support during periods of acute security challenges. What followed was a reassessment of relations and a reduction of excessive dependence on any single external actor.
For Armenia, strategic connectivity is emerging as a pathway to greater prosperity, resilience, and autonomy in an increasingly fragmented international system. In 2023, Prime Minister Pashinyan unveiled the Crossroads of Peace initiative, seeking to position the country as a facilitator of regional connectivity between the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
While Yerevan is substantially revising its foreign policy, Astana is modifying its approach incrementally. Like Armenia, Kazakhstan has, over the past decades, leaned on Russia for security and economic development. However, unlike Armenia, Kazakhstan was not locked in a conflict with a neighboring state, making it more dependent on Russia, and due to its geographic position, it could not be tempted by integration with Europe. Astana invested in Central Asian stability and cooperation and pursued a sophisticated multi-vector foreign policy, balancing relations with Russia, China, Europe, the United States, Turkey, and others.
More recently, Kazakhstan has been practicing “double hedging”—deepening ties with China to mitigate potential risks coming from Russia, while simultaneously strengthening partnerships with the European Union, the United States, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, and Gulf countries to avoid excessive dependence on either Moscow or Beijing. To diversify and hedge, it has focused on developing the Middle Corridor, connecting it across the Caspian Sea with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and the rest of Europe.
During President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s recent visit to Brussels, Kazakhstan and the EU signed agreements and commercial deals to facilitate the movement of goods and people through the corridor, including the Horizontal Aviation Agreement (allowing any eligible European airline to fly to Kazakhstan), a purchase of 50 aircraft from Airbus, and a service contract with the French locomotive maker Alstom.
While Kazakhstan’s friendship with Azerbaijan and Turkey, both “brotherly Turkic nations,” is traditionally strong, it has also maintained good relations with Armenia and sought to play a constructive diplomatic role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was actively involved in mediation efforts on the Karabakh issue in the early 1990s and organized Armenia-Azerbaijan talks in 2004. Under President Tokayev, Astana hosted a round of bilateral peace talks in 2024. Kazakhstan can only welcome the ongoing normalization of relations between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.
During Prime Minister Pashinyan’s official visit to Astana in November 2025, the two countries elevated their relations to a “strategic partnership” and signed a broad package of agreements. President Tokayev further underscored the importance Astana attaches to the relationship by awarding Prime Minister Pashinyan the Order of the Golden Eagle, Kazakhstan’s highest state decoration.
Significantly, President Tokayev was among the first leaders to congratulate Prime Minister Pashinyan on his electoral victory earlier this month, while Moscow delayed its response. The contrast should not be exaggerated, but it highlights an important nuance. Both Armenia and Kazakhstan are eager to have friendly relations with Russia. Still, they are also determined to strengthen their sovereignty by becoming embedded in diversified political and security partnerships and global trade networks.
Armenia’s determination to become a transport logistics hub, which would greatly enhance the South Caucasus’ capacity as a bridge between Asia and Europe, opens new opportunities for Armenia-Kazakhstan relations. Armenia could use a shorter connection to Kazakhstan via Azerbaijan (the first shipment of Kazakh wheat sent along this route arrived in Armenia successfully in November last year), thereby making access to dynamic Asian markets easier. If the Meghri Corridor and the Trump International Route for Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) routes materialize, Kazakhstan will receive another route to Turkey via Azerbaijan and Armenia (in addition to the existing Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey route).
Apart from trade, the bilateral agreements signed in Astana covered high technology, artificial intelligence, education, agriculture, healthcare, and business cooperation. Given the two countries’ shared Soviet legacies, similar current circumstances, particularly being members of the Eurasian Economic Union, and increasingly similar worldviews and development paths, there is plenty of potential in all these areas.
The two countries are alike in their bet on rapid digital transformation. Firebird, the US-based cloud and infrastructure company co-founded by representatives of the Armenian diaspora, is building a large NVIDIA-powered data center in Armenia. Armenia positions itself as an emerging platform in the South Caucasus for high-performance computing, cloud services, and AI research, and describes itself as a “Garden of AI Factories.”
On 15 June 2026, the Kazakh government, Firebird, and NVIDIA announced a package of agreements worth up to $10 billion to develop national AI infrastructure, advanced computing capacity, and the “Data Center Valley” project in northeastern Kazakhstan.
The convergence of Armenia’s and Kazakhstan’s foreign policies, despite their different circumstances, aligns with a broader global trend. Smaller and medium-sized countries cannot entrust their security and prosperity to one power. They need to hedge risks and diversify. If they find themselves at the intersection of major geopolitical and economic spaces, it is not prudent to choose a side. The strategic challenge for Armenia and Kazakhstan is not to choose between East and West, but to preserve sufficient flexibility to benefit from both.
Such balancing is neither easy nor cost-free. Both countries remain vulnerable to external pressure. Yet their experience suggests that diversification may be the most realistic path toward preserving sovereignty in an era of growing geopolitical competition. Eventually, if it works, countries on the edge may serve as bridges or crossroads connecting different worlds and as safe havens for people, businesses, and capital.
David Akopyan is an international development professional. He worked for the UN for three decades on state-building and economic development. Among his leadership assignments are the UNDP Resident Representative in Syria, director in Somalia, and deputy director in Afghanistan. He was also involved in designing the Sustainable Development Goals. He serves as the chair of the reArmenia board of trustees, and on the board of the Applied Policy and Research Institute, and writes on the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Nargis Kassenova is a senior fellow and director of the Program on Central Asia at the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. She holds a PhD in international cooperation studies from the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University (Japan). Her research focuses on Central Asian politics and security, Eurasian geopolitics, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, governance in Central Asia, and the history of state-making in Central Asia. She is on the editorial boards of the journals Central Asian Survey, Central Asian Affairs, and Asia Policy Journal.
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