Kazakhstan and Russia are both founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and are additionally part of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Following the collapse of the USSR, the issue of nuclear weapons was central to diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and Russia, the West, and the broader international community.

[1] In recent years, Kazakhstan has attempted to balance ties between both sides by selling petroleum and natural gas to its northern neighbor at artificially low prices, allowing heavy investment from Russian businesses, and concluding an agreement over the Baikonur Cosmodrome, while simultaneously assisting the West in the War on Terror.

[5] During the reign of Kasym Khan from 1511 to 1521, the Tsardom of Russia became the first major state to establish diplomatic relations with the Kazakh Khanate.

In 1906, the Trans-Aral Railway between Orenburg and Tashkent was completed, further facilitating Russian colonisation of the fertile lands of the Zhetysu region.

Although the Russian Empire recognised the ethnic difference between the two groups, it called them both "Kyrgyz" to avoid confusion between the terms "Kazakhs" and "Cossacks".

[15] The Kazakh SSR was the second largest union republic within the USSR and had a comparably high level of economic development thanks to its large deposits of raw materials (including oil, coal, natural gas and uranium).

On May 23, 2009, the two countries placed their first boundary marker on the 7,591 km (4,717 mi) border between Kazakhstan's Atyrau and Russia's Astrakhan provinces.

[18][needs update] In 2013, President Vladimir Putin raised controversy when he claimed that “Kazakhs had never had statehood”, in what seemed to be an apparent response to growing nationalism among Kazakhstanis.

[28] At the request of Tokayev government, Russia participated in the CSTO Peacekeeping Force effort to quell the anti-government protests on 6 January 2022.

Russia suspended shipments of Kazakh oil after Tokayev’s statements at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he stated that Kazakhstan considered the DPR and LPR as “quasi-state entities” and would not recognize them.

[38] On the other hand, in spite of some tensions, Kazakhstan's relations with Russia remain strong and mostly friendly, as shown by Tokayev's visit to Moscow in November 2022.

President Tokayev promised that his government would help Russians who were leaving "because of the current hopeless situation", and that it was "a political and a humanitarian issue.

[42] In January 2023, Kazakhstan announced they were tightening visa rules, a move that is expected to make it more difficult for Russians to remain in the country.

[48] In July 2024, Kazakhstan banned wheat imports from Russia through the end of the year in order to "protect the domestic market".

[50] Russia's ban was implemented five days after Kazakhstan said it didn't have plans to join BRICS in the near future, but it is unclear if these two events are related.

[55] In March 2023, Kazakhstan canceled a music festival where pro-Kremlin Russian singers, including Grigory Leps, were scheduled to perform.

In June 2023, Leps' concert in the Almaty Region was canceled following pressure from the Kazakh public and activists over his support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[56] In January 2024, pro-Kremlin television presenter Tina Kandelaki was banned from entering Kazakhstan over her online comments alleging that the Russian language was being discriminated against in the Central Asian country.