It is a measure of how digital the world has become that one of the strategic aftershocks of the war in Ukraine is being felt in the app stores of Central Asia. Ukrainian strikes linked to Yandex infrastructure have sharpened a debate in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan about dependence on foreign platforms for search, transport, payments and data storage.
Both countries are responding with a sovereignty toolkit: data-localisation requirements, promotion of domestic platforms and investment in regional fibre and data centres. Our explainer sets out what happened, why Yandex matters so much in the region, and how the push for digital self-reliance could reshape one of the world’s fastest-growing internet markets.
The immediate trigger was military: Ukrainian strikes that hit infrastructure linked to Yandex, the technology giant long treated as the default search, taxi, maps and delivery layer across much of the Russian-speaking internet. For users in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the disruption was a practical reminder that services they use every day can become collateral in a war being fought elsewhere.
Sovereignty without isolation
Neither government is proposing a splinternet. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan both court Western and Chinese investment, host international platforms and depend on global transit routes for their connectivity. The emerging model is better described as layered dependence: global services welcome to operate, but on local data terms, with domestic alternatives strong enough that no single foreign failure, whether caused by a missile, a sanction or a boardroom, can paralyse daily life.
That balancing act is delicate. Push localisation too hard and prices rise while quality falls; push too softly and the Yandex lesson repeats with a different logo. Regional experts expect a decade of negotiation, exemption and quiet technical work rather than a single dramatic break.
Analysts who follow the region, including coverage in The Diplomat, have noted how quickly the conversation in Astana and Tashkent turned from sympathy to strategy. If a foreign platform can be degraded by missiles, sanctions or a headquarters decision taken in Moscow or Amsterdam, then depending on it for payments, transport and government-adjacent services starts to look like a vulnerability rather than a convenience.
The infrastructure underneath
Platforms sit on physical networks, and here the map is also being redrawn. New fibre routes across the Caspian and through the Caucasus are designed to give Central Asia paths to Europe that do not run through Russia, while satellite and regional exchange points reduce dependence on any single transit provider. Each project is slow and capital-intensive, but together they amount to an insurance policy written in glass fibre.
Both countries had already been moving. Kazakhstan’s digital-government stack and its Kaspi-centred fintech ecosystem are substantially domestic, while Uzbekistan has used its IT Park programme and tax incentives to pull startups and outsourcers into Tashkent. Data-localisation rules in both countries require certain categories of personal data to be stored on servers inside their borders.
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Regional neighbours are watching
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan face versions of the same dependence with smaller budgets and thinner startup ecosystems, and officials from across the region attend the same conferences, hire the same consultants and read the same post-mortems. If Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan demonstrate that localisation plus local champions can work without breaking the consumer internet, expect the model to travel. If services degrade, expect a quieter retreat to pragmatic dependence. Either way, the experiment now running in Almaty and Tashkent has an audience far beyond its borders.
Sovereignty, in the end, is not a flag over a server hall. It is the ability to keep daily life running when someone else’s conflict, sanctions or corporate decision reaches into your country’s phones. On the evidence of the past year, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have decided that ability is worth building, and they are building it.
