Who moved? Kazakhstan and Russia in United Nations general assembly votes, 1992-2022

Abstract

Kazakhstan describes its foreign policy as multi-vector. This study uses the roll-call votes of the UN General Assembly from 1992 to 2022 to ask how often Kazakhstan votes the same way as Russia, China, the United States, Turkey and two European Union members, and whether it has moved away from Russia. Excluding resolutions on Ukraine, Kazakhstan voted with Russia in 78.6% of votes in 2005-2013, 63.8% in 2014-2021 and 57.7% in 2022, while agreement with China stayed at 76.6-84.6%. The fall began before 2014: 79.4% in 2011, 73.3% in 2012, 68.3% in 2013. It is concentrated in resolutions on nuclear weapons, where the two countries had long disagreed and where the gap widened in 2012-2013 as Russia voted yes less often; on other topics agreement with Russia changed little until 2014. Kazakhstan's agreement with the Assembly majority rose to about 91%. On the resolutions on Ukraine in the dataset, Kazakhstan voted with Russia on the 6 on human rights in Crimea and abstained on the other 4. The results support the author's expectation that Kazakhstan votes closest to China and has moved away from Russia, but show that the distance appeared before 2014, largely on nuclear disarmament, where Russia's votes changed.

Keywords: United Nations General Assembly, voting, Kazakhstan, Russia, China, multi-vector foreign policy

References

1. Bailey M.A., Strezhnev A., Voeten E. Estimating dynamic state preferences from United Nations voting data // Journal of Conflict Resolution. 2017. Vol. 61, No. 2. P. 430-456. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002715595700
2. Voeten E., Strezhnev A., Bailey M. United Nations General Assembly Voting Data. Harvard Dataverse, version 32. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LEJUQZ (accessed 30.10.2026).
3. United Nations Digital Library. Voting records of resolutions A/RES/ES-11/1 to A/RES/ES-11/10. https://digitallibrary.un.org (accessed 21.10.2026).

How to cite

Bakytbek Yerkezhan Who moved? Kazakhstan and Russia in United Nations general assembly votes, 1992-2022 // Central Asian Scientific Journal. – 2026. – No. 4(32), Vol. 2. – Pp. 35–38. – DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23889298.