The modern world is undergoing a profound transformation, accompanied by increasing uncertainty and declining global resilience. Under these conditions, the importance of regional responsibility for creating a stable and predictable development environment is growing, writes Akramjan Nematov, First Deputy Director of the Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, specially for the Valdai Club’s Sixth Central Asian Conference.
For the countries of Central Asia, this shared greater region is Eurasia, where historically established economic, transport, and humanitarian interconnectedness are becoming an important factor in adapting to external shocks and strengthening resilience.
In line with this logic, Uzbekistan is pursuing a consistent policy, initiating the formation of a regional configuration aimed at building a more coherent model of interaction and strengthening interconnectedness within the vast Eurasian region. Through platforms such as the CIS, SCO, EAEU, CICA, ECO, and the United Territories of Central Asia (UTC), Uzbekistan is advancing a practical agenda aimed at creating a self-sufficient industrial and technological development space with sustainable value chains. Since 2016, dozens of initiatives have been launched, covering trade, transport, energy, and industrial cooperation.
Crucially, this is not about isolation, but about creating an internally sustainable and simultaneously open region. In this regard, in order to overcome the growing fragmentation of the global system, Uzbekistan advocates for the institutionalisation of the principles neighbourliness, trust, and solidarity. This includes promoting initiatives such as the development of a Code of Good-Neighbourhood, Trust, and Cross-Border Partnership, which aims to enshrine common approaches to strengthening regional cooperation, as well as the Samarkand Solidarity Initiative for Common Security and Prosperity, which aims to restore trust and develop an inclusive dialogue in the Eurasian region.
Uzbekistan’s Role in the Transformation of Central Asia
This policy has largely determined the qualitative changes in Central Asia itself. Strengthening trust and the development of practical cooperation between the region’s states have significantly reduced tensions, intensified economic ties, and created a more stable regional environment.
Largely thanks to this policy, Central Asia is now demonstrating a qualitatively new dynamic. The region is becoming more stable, transforming into a dynamically growing market, and strengthening its role as a logistics hub and an emerging centre of industrial growth.
Crucially, Central Asia is increasingly emerging as a consolidated region with growing agency. This allows it not only to more effectively address domestic challenges but also to act as an independent factor of stability in Eurasia. Essentially, the region is becoming a pillar of Eurasian architecture, and supporting this trend is in the interests of all external partners.
The combined GDP of the region’s countries has virtually doubled over the past decade to exceed $560 billion, with average annual growth rates of approximately 6% consistently exceeding the global average. Intraregional trade has increased approximately 4.5-fold, from $2.4 billion in 2016 to $10.7 billion, with investment activity growing and the industrial base expanding.
The practical impact of this transformation is evident in logistics, energy, and trade. The role of overland transport corridors is increasing, including routes through Afghanistan to South Asia. Rail freight and transit volumes are steadily growing, confirming the region’s growing role as a key logistics hub. In recent years, rail freight volumes through Central Asian countries have grown by more than 20-30%, while transit through Uzbekistan has increased by 50%.
The energy sector remains highly interdependent, and investment activity is growing, ranging from infrastructure modernisation to the development of renewable energy and nuclear projects. Electricity demand creates the groundwork for cooperation. The region’s overall energy potential is growing: renewable energy projects with a capacity of over 30 GW have been announced, and electricity production in Central Asia is growing steadily by 4—4.1% per year.
In 2025, electricity generation in Uzbekistan reached 86.7 billion kWh, 6% higher than the previous year. Of this, 16.8 billion kWh, or approximately 20%, was generated by renewable energy sources. The installed capacity of renewable energy facilities by the end of 2025 exceeded 10,000 MW, more than five times the 2016 figure.
In trade, the region is moving towards a more complex economic model, becoming not only a sales market but also a supplier of value-added products. Exports of processed goods, from textiles to electrical equipment and building materials, are growing. At the same time, the region’s manufacturing core is developing agro-processing, chemicals, building materials, and mechanical engineering, strengthening industrial integration. Average annual growth rates for industrial production in the region are approximately 7-8%, while agriculture grows 4-5%, with processing segments demonstrating faster growth, reaching 8-9% annually.
The Role of Russia and the “Central Asia-Russia” Format
For Russia, Central Asia is no longer simply a geographical “neighbourhood,” but a complex, multilayered space of strategic interests. I would even say that we are witnessing a gradual rethinking of the very logic of interaction with the region. Relations between Russia and Central Asia have changed significantly in recent years.
Central Asia is no longer a periphery separating Russia from a belt of instability, but a region that acts as a full-fledged development partner and an independent centre of economic dynamism, a kind of growth accumulator.
Today, Central Asia is becoming an integral part of the broader Greater Eurasia framework. Without its inclusion, without the development of transport corridors, industrial cooperation, and human capital, deep Eurasian integration is simply impossible. In this sense, the reassessment of the region’s role reflects objective processes that cannot be ignored.
This is most clearly demonstrated by Russia’s desire to shift its partnership model with the countries of Central Asia toward closer trade, economic, investment, and technological integration.
At the centre of this cooperation is the transfer of competencies and the creation of a common industrial, technological, and educational environment.
The scale of this shift is confirmed by figures and facts. Trade turnover between Russia and the countries of the region has reached $50 billion, and accumulated direct Russian investment already exceeded $22 billion. Moreover, these investments are concentrated less and less in the raw materials sector, shifting to high-tech niches such as fintech, pharmaceuticals, retail, and the tech sector.
Against this backdrop, the region is becoming a platform for so-called “industrial offshoring,” where not just assembly plants are being established, but joint ventures generating high added value. A telling example is the development of cooperative formats: the “Innoprom. Central Asia” project, initiated jointly by Uzbekistan and Russia, has evolved into a broad international industrial platform involving not only the countries of the region but also external partners, reflecting both deepening industrial integration and expanding access to foreign markets.
Equally important is the change of the geoeconomic role of the region itself, transforming from a “geographical dead end” on the outskirts of the CIS into a key crossroads of overland routes linking both East and West and North and South. Today, the countries of Central Asia no longer simply want to be transit territories. They are seeking to capitalise on their position by creating industrial hubs and logistics services along transport arteries.
The region essentially aspires to hold the role of a central link in a multipolar transport and economic system, where success depends not on geography per se, but on the ability to integrate into new value chains and, crucially, to manage their development jointly with partners. This involves a transition from a transit model to an industrial and logistics convergence model, where a transport corridor becomes a catalyst for deep industrialisation.
For Russia, this transformation opens up fundamentally new strategic horizons. Through partnerships with Central Asian states, Moscow gains access to a highly diversified system of corridors, which is critical in the face of global turbulence and market fragmentation.
In turn, the expansion of corridors creates the preconditions for the formation of distributed production chains, within which various stages of added value creation are localised in different countries of the region. In this format, Central Asia is gradually integrating into a single production space with Russia, strengthening the interdependence of economies and making cooperation more sustainable and long-term. Along with the development of infrastructure and industrial cooperation, the nature of humanitarian ties is also changing. Today, the countries of Central Asia and Russia are investing in the establishment of a common educational and scientific space.
The opening of branches of leading Russian universities in the region, the development of joint training programmes, and the mutual recognition of qualifications are all shaping a more intellectual model of integration. In the long term, precisely these ties create a sustainable foundation for partnership, as they foster professional communities with a shared understanding of economic and technological processes, as well as common standards and practices.
As a result, humanitarian ties are no longer an auxiliary element; they are becoming the foundation of a sustainable partnership, ensuring the reproduction of cooperation on a new, deeper level.
Finally, the institutional level of interaction is becoming an important indicator of change. The emergence of the “5+1” format at the highest level demonstrates that Russia increasingly recognises the collective agency of the Central Asian countries. This is a fundamental point. Strong, sovereign, and economically successful states in the region are a key condition for the stability and long-term development of the entire Eurasian region.
Strategic Conclusion: A New Development Model
More broadly, this is a transition to a new development model in which Central Asia evolves from being primarily a transit space to becoming the production and economic core of Eurasia, with an emphasis on industrial integration and the development of its own value chains.
A key change is that the region is already moving beyond old perceptions of it as being a buffer zone and is establishing itself as an independent entity with its own agenda. Its strategic goal is to foster open and mutually beneficial cooperation with all external partners while simultaneously assuming full responsibility for ensuring the region’s security, stability, and sustainable development. This entails strengthening internal connectivity, building industrial and technological potential, and pursuing a balanced foreign economic policy focused on integration into global value chains.
The key conclusion is that a strong, economically connected, and stable Central Asia serves the strategic interests of all participants in the Eurasian space. In the context of global transformation, regional cooperation formats provide the foundation for new resilience.
By advancing its regional responsibility agenda, Uzbekistan is striving to develop a practical model of interaction in which partnership with Russia becomes a key element of long-term development.
