Kazakhstan–Russia border
The longest continuous land border in the world, over 7,500 km from the Caspian Sea to the tripoint with China. It began as a Soviet internal boundary, and only became an international border, with a treaty to prove it, in 2005.
Written from cited sourcesLast checked 28 September 2026Suggest a correction
See it on the globe:Kazakhstan →Russia →
A Soviet line
Before 1991 this was a boundary inside the Soviet Union, between the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.[2] Soviet rule forcibly settled the nomadic Kazakhs and brought large-scale Slavic migration; for a time in the 20th century Russians outnumbered Kazakhs in Kazakhstan.[3]
Kazakhstan declared independence on 16 December 1991.[3] Like the other former Soviet republics, it took over its old internal boundaries on the principle of uti possidetis, “as you possess”. Its 1990 declaration of sovereignty had already said its territory within the existing boundaries was indivisible and inviolable.[2]
“The territory of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic within the existing boundaries is indivisible and inviolable and cannot be used without her consent.”[2]
Negotiating a border
According to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, then chairman of Kazakhstan’s Senate, Russia at first wanted a “light” treaty in 1992 without a clause recognising each other’s territorial integrity, and it took President Nazarbayev’s personal talks with Boris Yeltsin to change that.[2] Talks on the line itself took years. In 1999 Kazakhstan, Russia and three other states set up a commission on their shared borders.[2]
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev signed the border treaty in Moscow on 18 January 2005.[1] To clear the last hurdle, the two sides split the Imashev gas condensate field in Kazakhstan’s Atyrau region equally, Russia dropped claims to some land given to Kazakhstan in Soviet times, and Kazakhstan gave up the village of Ognyeuponoye in Kostanay region.[4]
Reactions
The treaty was heralded as historic, but nationalists in both countries protested. The Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky said there was no need for a treaty at all, since in his view Kazakh lands were historically only the south of the country; Kazakh activists demonstrated at the Russian embassy in Almaty. Critics in Kazakhstan argued their country had paid too high a price.[4]
Twenty years on, in January 2025, Kazakhstan’s president Tokayev called the treaty a firm foundation for the legal formalisation of the world’s longest land border.[1]
Timeline
1990
Declaration of sovereignty
The Kazakh SSR declares its existing borders indivisible and inviolable.[2]
199116 December 1991
Independence
Kazakhstan declares independence.[3]
1992
First treaty
Nazarbayev persuades Yeltsin to include territorial integrity.[2]
1999
Border commission
Kazakhstan, Russia and three neighbours set up a commission on shared borders.[2]
200518 January 2005
Border treaty
Putin and Nazarbayev sign the treaty in Moscow.[1]
More borders
Sources
- [1]Border treaty between Kazakhstan, Russia embodies friendship, cooperation — Kazakh leader · TASS · 18 January 2025
- [2]Defining the New State Borders in 1990–2005 as Key Foundation of Statehood · The Astana Times (Burkitbai Ayagan, Institute of State History) · 12 May 2014
- [3]Kazakhstan · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- [4]Russian-Kazakh Border Agreement Sparks Nationalist Reaction · Jamestown Foundation, Eurasia Daily Monitor · 27 January 2005
Map geometry from Natural Earth via world-atlas. See credits.