Kazakhstan plans from 2027 to completely abandon the purchase of electricity from Russia due to the commissioning of its own energy facilities, said Deputy Energy Minister Sungat Yesimkhanov.
If the planned energy facilities are commissioned in late 2026 or early 2027, Kazakhstan will be able to meet domestic demand without Russian supplies, he said. “If we commission all our planned energy facilities at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year, I think in 2027 we will not buy electricity from Russia at all,” Yesimkhanov said at a news conference.
Kazakhstan has purchased electricity from Russia annually in recent years because of a shortage of its own capacity. According to the Energy Ministry, the deficit is decreasing: in 2024 it was 2.1bn kWh, in 2025 it will be about 1.5bn kWh, and in 2026 it is expected to be 1-1.2bn kWh. In 2027, the authorities expect to zero this figure.
Earlier, Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Erlan Akkenzhenov said that the country intends to fully cover the needs of the economy in electricity by the end of the first quarter of 2027. For this purpose, Kazakhstan is implementing 81 energy projects with a total capacity of 15.3 GW and investments of more than 13 trillion tenge, or more than $25bn.
The cancellation of Russian supplies will be an important stage in Kazakhstan’s energy policy. For the country, this means reducing its dependence on external sources of electricity and shifting to a more autonomous energy balance model. At the same time, the success of the plan will depend on the timing of commissioning new facilities, the state of the grid and the ability of the energy system to cover peak loads.
The decision also has regional significance. Kazakhstan remains part of the unified energy system of Central Asia and is linked to the Russian grid, so reducing imports from Russia does not mean a complete technological break. However, in economic and political terms, the course of substituting Russian supplies demonstrates Astana’s desire to strengthen its own energy security and reduce its vulnerability to external disruptions.
For Russia, this means a gradual loss of part of Kazakhstan’s electricity export demand. For Central Asia, it is a signal to accelerate modernisation of generation, construction of new CHP plants, development of renewable energy sources and improvement of grid reliability, as capacity shortages remain one of the region’s main infrastructure problems.