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Kazakhstan–Russia relations refers to bilateral foreign relations between Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. Kazakhstan has an embassy in Moscow, a consulate-general in Saint Petersburg, Astrakhan and Omsk. Russia has an embassy in Astana and consulates in Almaty and Uralsk. Astana and Moscow are military and political allies.
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Overview
Kazakhstan and Russia are both founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and are additionally part of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Both also founded the Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus. 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.
Border agreements
On January 2005 President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed an agreement approving an official map of the border. 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. The demarcation is expected to take 10 to 15 years to complete.
Statehood
Putin's remarks on the historicity of Kazakhstan led to a severe response from Nazarbayev.