After the USA, Germany has become the second country in terms of aid to Ukraine, which has had a significant impact on its energy relationship with Russia. However, the Kremlin’s blackmail with oil products did not produce the expected result. Germany endured the previous heating season at great economic risk, so it has already started preparing for the next one. As a result, the President of Kazakhstan is collaborating with the German government to make Germany one of their primary oil buyers this year.
There are no irreplaceable ones
In January 2023, its strategy gained momentum as Kazakhstan transported approximately 90,000 tons of oil to the Schwedt plant for processing. Due to the embargo on Russian oil products, Germany readily accepted the offer from the Kazakh side. In this way, two urgent problems were solved at once:
- they reduced the risk of an energy crisis;
- they eliminated the mechanism of Russian manipulation and gained autonomy in making political decisions.
Fatal mistake
President of Kazakhstan Tokayev chose a logical moment to establish “raw-material” relations with Europe. Russia is forced to change the vector of the search for partners, freeing up a giant segment of the market. Only by the end of the current year, the Kazakh government is ready to provide Germany with oil in the amount of more than 1 million tons.
Due to this, there is an active increase in the production of oil products in Kazakhstan. At a time when Russia is rapidly losing oil revenues, its neighbors are expanding their economies at the expense of the Kremlin’s strategic fiasco.
