‘Freeze the conflict’: Drones slow Kazakh oil flow amid Russia-Ukraine war

Published 26 July 2026 · world

Kazakh oil exports halt after drone attacks disrupt supplies, posing risks to the economy and energy markets. Sitting next to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Kazakhstan’s

Kazakh oil exports halt after drone attacks disrupt supplies, posing risks to the economy and energy markets. Sitting next to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Saturday cautiously weighed in on the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fifth year. “If I may offer my humble opinion … perhaps it is time to freeze this conflict and return to the Istanbul formula 2.0,” he told reporters in the ⁠Siberian city of Omsk. Tokayev was referring to a botched agreement that envisaged an immediate suspension of hostilities along the existing front line and further talks brokered by Western powers. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow ally Tokayev dared to contradict Putin by emphasising that Kazakhstan would not recognise occupied Ukrainian regions as part of Russia. But this time, he praised Putin’s “diplomatic flexibility” and named Russia among the “great powers” that could guarantee peace in Ukraine. “All of this should be stopped, because what’s happening plays into the hands of the enemies of Russia and the Ukrainian people,” said Tokayev. His comments came as Kazakhstan, a country boasting several “supergiant” oil fields that serve as the European Union’s second-largest source of crude, said on Thursday that it had slashed oil production after drone attacks blamed on Ukraine forced its main export terminal on the Black Sea to shut down. Light but “sour”, or hard to process, Kazakhstan’s crude is known as the CPC brand, named after the Caspian Pipeline Consortium that includes Western energy giants such as Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell.

The pipeline that pumps the crude westwards across the bone-dry steppes is 1,500km (932 miles) long and ends in the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. The port is said to have become the new hideout for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet that fled the annexed Crimea Peninsula after hundreds of Ukrainian attacks by aerial and sea drones and missiles following the start of the war. Novorossiisk is also the target of Ukraine’s new policy of striking Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of tankers that ship Russian oil despite Western sanctions. In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have hit almost 200 “shadow fleet” vessels, including tankers and dry cargo ships, in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Drone attacks that Kazakhstan blames on Ukraine have also struck several tankers with CPC oil and damaged the consortium’s marine terminal in Novorossiysk. ‘Unacceptable encroachment’ The attacks, which began in November 2025 but intensified this month, prompted an angry response from officials in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. In a statement on July 19, the Foreign Ministry called them an “unacceptable encroachment” on Kazakhstan’s economic interests, saying they were designed to “destabilise legitimate international trade, world energy markets, and the security of global transport and logistics supply chains”. A day later, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Kazakhstan Viktor Mayko retorted by saying that there was “no proof” that the drones were Ukrainian and that Astana should refrain from “hasty and ungrounded accusations”.