Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was in Washington this week for two significant White House meetings with US President Donald Trump on November 6, a one-on-one discussion and C5+1 gathering along with the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The first high level C5+1 summit was held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in 2015.
Following the meeting, Trump announced that Kazakhstan had joined the Abraham Accords, becoming the first Central Asian country to do so. The Accords, established in 2020, aim to foster “normal relations” with Israel and were originally signed by a handful of Muslim-majority countries. Kazakhstan, which has had stable diplomatic relations with Israel for more than 30 years, is the first to sign the Accords since the start of the war in Gaza. In an interview with the New York Times, Tokayev framed the strengthening of Kazakhstan’s longstanding relations with Israel as a pragmatic economic move.
A group of LGBT+ activists condemned on November 5 a draft law recently approved by a parliamentary working group in Kazakhstan that would penalize so-called “LGBT propaganda,” labelling it “dangerous, colonialist, and unconstitutional.” At a press conference organized by LGBT+ rights group Feminita in Almaty, several activists stressed the harmful effect such a law’s passage would have on Kazakhstan’s already marginalized queer community. [Read more here.]
Swiss oil trader Gunvor retracted on November 6 its offer to buy an Austria-registered branch of Russia’s oil company Lukoil. The decision comes after the US Treasury Department warned that Gunvor would “never get a license to operate and profit,” should the deal go through, calling the company “Kremlin’s puppet.” Last week, Lukoil said it had accepted a preliminary offer to sell its international assets through its Austrian subsidiary following the US government’s imposition of new sanctions against the company.
The Majilis, Kazakhstan’s lower chamber of parliament, approved on November 5 legislative amendments that will grant incentives to extractive companies seeking to boost hard and shale oil production. In some of Kazakhstan’s oil fields, recovery requires expensive technology and, “without appropriate support measures, their implementation will be economically unviable,” said MP Yedil Zhanbyrshin.
Kazakhstan’s Central Bank has proposed using part of the National Fund’s gold and foreign exchange reserves to purchase cryptocurrencies. Deputy chairman Berik Sholpankulov said on November 5 that the move aims to establish a state crypto reserve to help diversify the country’s national assets.
Kaspi and Alatau City Bank shareholder Vyacheslav Kim led a venture of companies that will buy electric eVTOL aircraft worth around $300 million to establish an air taxi system in the city of Alatau, the ministry of AI said on November 7. The government plans to turn the new city of Alatau into a hub for digital innovation.
David Loriya, the secretary of Kazakhstan’s Football Federation, said on November 4 that a number of football clubs are being privatized. Kyzylorda’s FC Kaisar was sold in October to a private investor. Petropavlovsk’s FC Kyzylzhar, Astana’s Zhenis, and Karaganda’s Shakhtar should be privatized via auction in the next months. The majority of football clubs in Kazakhstan are owned either by the government or by the municipal administration.
The carcasses of 112 Caspian seals were found washed ashore by a monitoring team from the Mangistau regional ecology department on November 4. Seasonal seal migration and currents routinely bring dead seals to the Caspian Sea coastline in the Mangistau region.
Karakalpak human rights defender Akylbek Muratbai has left Kazakhstan, Bureau.kz reported on November 7. According to a press release, he was granted a visa to an undisclosed Western country. Muratbai was arrested in Kazakhstan in February 2024 after a request from Uzbek authorities and spent a year in a pretrial detention center in Almaty. In an October 2025 interview with Vlast, Muratbai said he had appealed to Western countries for help, but had not received any support.
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