As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the Kremlin is looking to Central Asia, a region it regards as its traditional backyard, to find new markets for its gas exports and ways of evading Western sanctions to keep its war effort on track.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent birthday greetings to Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, thanking him for his “immense personal contribution” to “enhancing the strategic partnership and alliance between our two countries.” The lavish praise came after Uzbekistan signed a two-year gas agreement with Russia’s Gazprom on June 16 — days before an uprising by the Wagner mercenary group shook Putin’s government.

The Russian energy giant is to supply 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Oct. 1, the Uzbek Energy Ministry says. Last winter, Uzbekistan faced chronic gas shortages, so this deal should go some way toward mitigating such shortfalls.

Gas will be supplied in “reverse mode” across Kazakhstan through the existing Central Asia-Center gas pipeline, with a capacity of 50 billion cu. meters a year. Gazprom signed a transit contract with Kazakh state-owned gas company QazaqGaz the same day as the supply deal was reached, covering flows to Uzbekistan.

The Russian company is discussing a similar gas supply agreement with Kazakhstan.

The deal with Uzbekistan is a win for Russia as it seeks new markets after being mostly shut out of lucrative European business following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Still, 2.8 billion cu. meters is a drop in the ocean compared with the 155 billion that was exported to European Union countries in 2021.

For Uzbekistan, the deal comes with the danger of “gas blackmail.” Since Russia controls the flow of gas, it can turn the taps on and off to exert political pressure when it sees fit. Such scenarios were seen in Ukraine from the mid-2000s onward, and more recently in Moldova.

As well as finding new customers for its gas, Russia is also suspected of using Central Asian countries as backdoor routes for sanctioned dual-use technology, which has both civilian and military applications. This has led to a string of penalties against companies in the region, highlighting the risks of such trade.

On July 20, the U.S. Treasury Department added four Kyrgyzstan-registered companies — all established after the start of the war in Ukraine — to its sanctions list. “Entities based in the Kyrgyz Republic have been frequent exporters of controlled electronics components and other technology to Russia since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” the department said. “Some of these shipments have subsequently supplied sensitive dual-use goods to entities in Russia’s defense sector.”

While the Kyrgyz government swiftly denied any involvement of “state structures or companies” in these exports, a report released on July 22 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said Kyrgyzstan had recently altered the way it reports trade data. Where previously a 10-digit code was used to identify individual items, now it uses a four-digit code.

The change has made it practically impossible to track individual exports in a detailed way, the report noted. A Kyrgyz official told the project that it was for “optimization of information.”

The focus on Kyrgyzstan followed the U.S. Department of Commerce’s identification in April of two Uzbekistan-based companies that it said were set up to “evade export controls and acquiring or attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of Russia’s military and/or defense industrial base.”

The two entities were placed on the U.S. sanctions list. In June, the European Union followed suit and put the companies on its own list of sanctioned companies supporting the Russian war effort.

Kazakhstan, meanwhile, is wary of being caught up in secondary sanctions and the associated reputational damage that could undermine foreign investment.

In June, Serik Zhumangarin, the deputy prime minister and minister of trade and integration, confirmed that companies in Kazakhstan had supplied Russia with sanctioned dual-use technology. He gave assurances that the Kazakh government was working on preventing the future export of 104 types of goods to Russia by increasing oversight on companies involved in such exports.

Kazakhstan has also uncovered a channel used to export Russian grain to other Central Asian countries as “Kazakh grain.”

In a further blow to Russia, a number of banks in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are no longer working with Unistream, a Russian-based money transfer company, after the U.S. Treasury Department placed it on the sanctions list on July 20.

While Russia has made some small gains by finding new customers for its gas exports, it may be getting harder to acquire dual-use technology as sanctions screws tighten on its Central Asian allies.