On March 25, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev fired Yerbolat Dossayev from his post of deputy head of the presidential administration.Dossayev, who previously served as head of the Central Bank, deputy Prime-Minister, and mayor of Almaty, had held this position for just six months.On the same day, Tokayev appointed Nurlan Baibazarov as his assistant on economic affairs. A court in Astana placed journalist Botagoz Omarova under house arrest for two months on March 20.Omarova had been called in for police questioning and was subsequently accused of spreading false information, a criminal offense.In response, a group of journalists sent an open letter to Tokayev calling for this offense, which has long been used to target the media, to be decriminalized.Civic activist Sanzhar Bokayev was placed in pre-trial detention on March 21.Bokayev’s legal team told Vlast that he will be kept for two months at the National Security Committee’s detention center in Almaty.He was detained on March 18 upon returning from the US and accused of paying people to fell trees in order to stoke public outrage.The Russian Baltic Sea ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga suffered major Ukrainian drone attacks this week, disrupting oil shipments.Russia’s Baltic Sea ports also service Kazakh oil and the attacks, aimed at undermining Russia’s ability to profit amid the war in Iran, could negatively affect Kazakhstan’s budget.In February, the US government called on Ukraine to stop attacking energy infrastructure carrying Kazakh oil after the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk was hit by drone strikes.Speaking in Houston on March 24 at CERAWeek, a major global oil and gas conference, Energy minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said that Kazakhstan’s oil production had been fully restored after Ukrainian attacks had previously disrupted the CPC pipeline in December and January.Akkenzhenov said that Kazakhstan is “very dependent on the CPC pipeline and ​it is important to keep it out of ⁠sanctions and attacks.” On March 23, Kazakhstan’s government stripped oil majors Eni and Shell of their license to build a gas processing plant near the country’s north-western Karachaganak field.PSA, the agency responsible for production-sharing agreements with foreign oil companies, said the Italian and Dutch companies could not reach a final investment decision within the proper timeframe.Kalamkas-Khazar, a joint offshore drilling operation in the Caspian Sea between state-owned Kazmunaigas and Russia’s Lukoil, has been suspended “due to sanctions,” Kazmunaigas’s CEO Askhat Khassenov said during a video conference with analysts on March 26.Kalamkas-Khazar, a long-planned project, was preparing to begin operations when Lukoil was slapped with US sanctions linked to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.Kazakhstan’s Agency for the Regulation of the Financial Market gave Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank the green light on March 26 to open a subsidiary bank in Kazakhstan.ADCB, one of the largest banks in the UAE, is controlled by state-owned holding company Mubadala.ADCB already controls ADCB Islamic Bank in Kazakhstan, formerly known as Al Hilal Bank.Volatile US dollar-tenge exchange rate and global oil prices have negatively affected profits at Kazmunaigas, the company reported on March 26.In 2025, Kazmunaigas’s net profit was 1.1 trillion tenge ($2.2 billion), down 2% from the previous year.Analysts at Kursiv said that the unstable exchange rate, due to a stronger tenge, is likely to negatively affect the National Fund’s foreign currency holdings.In its 2025 World Air Quality Report, published on March 27, IQAir ranked Kazakhstan 27th among the most polluted countries.The report measures air pollution by concentration of PM2.5 in the air, with Kazakhstan’s annual average reaching 23.4 micrograms/cubic meter, nearly five times above the World Health Organization’s recommendations.Kyrgyz investigative journalist Makhabat Tazhibek kyzy was released from prison on March 23 after two years behind bars.Tazhibek kyzy served as the director of investigative outlet Temirov Live until she was arrested in January 2024 and later sentenced to six years in prison for allegedly inciting mass unrest.Earlier in March, Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court decided that her case would now be reviewed in a new trial.Sign up for our English-language newsletter.