The mountainous, landlocked Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan has historically been one of the region’s poorest economies, much of it reliant on remittances from migrant workers abroad. But four years ago, its fortunes got an unexpected boost.
After Western governments and their allies slapped Russia with sanctions over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan immediately emerged as a key hub for goods bypassing embargoes. From 2021 to 2022, the annual value of Kyrgyzstan’s exports to Russia leaped from $393m to $1.07bn, including products such as luxury cars and microchips.
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Some of those products, such as
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