A flurry of landmark arms deals is reshaping Central Asia’s strategic landscape, as regional states leverage alternative defense suppliers to assert their sovereignty amid Russia’s waning dominance and an intensifying Sino-Indian rivalry.
Indian Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed the export of India’s domestically developed Akash surface-to-air missile system to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, multiple media outlets reported.
The indigenous system—engineered by India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) to counter aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones up to altitudes of nearly 18 to 20 kilometers—will be supplied alongside the Indian Rajendra radar network and logistical maintenance packages.
While exact battery quantities and contract values remain undisclosed, the agreements build upon India’s 2022 deal with inaugural customer Armenia. The transactions offer Tajikistan and Turkmenistan a cost-effective, dependable alternative to diversify their armed forces away from legacy Soviet and Russian hardware without relying entirely on expanded procurement from China.
The move also capitalizes on constrained Russian arms shipments caused by the war in Ukraine. By establishing an operational footprint on China’s western flank, the Indian government aims to solidify its position as an emerging global defense exporter while reinforcing long-term maintenance and training alliances across the strategically vital region.
This dynamic shows how Central Asian states are using arms purchases from emerging suppliers like India and China to diversify away from an embattled Russia—a trend that intersects with intensifying Sino-Indian strategic competition while contending with Russia’s enduring regional influence.
India’s Akash missile export to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan comes shortly after China’s export of J-10CE fighters to Uzbekistan. This September, Uzbekistan has emerged as the second confirmed foreign operator of China’s advanced J-10CE combat aircraft, following Pakistan.
Official Uzbek footage revealed at least six jets operating in Tashkent, confirming deliveries amid reports of an order for 24 warplanes. The sale marks a breakthrough for China into a Central Asian defense market long dominated by Soviet and Russian manufacturers.
Bolstered by the Pakistani military’s combat use of the type against India, China’s 4.5-generation jet attracts buyers by combining competitive pricing, rapid delivery, and advanced avionics, notably outflanking sanctioned Russian competitors.
The Russia-Ukraine War may have forced Central Asian states to rethink their security relationship with Russia. As Tsiporah Fried observes in a December 2025 Hudson Institute report, the Russian invasion of Ukraine accelerated the decline of Russian dominance across Central Asia, fragmenting the region into a multipolar landscape.
In that report, Fried notes that Western sanctions on Russia and wartime disruptions exposed the risks of overdependence, destabilizing Russian-mediated trade corridors, energy pipelines, and remittance flows while spurring regional inflation. Consequently, Fried states that Central Asian leaders now view Russia as an unpredictable vulnerability.
This vulnerability is reflected in Russian defense manufacturing. According to March 2026 data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia’s major arms exports collapsed by 64% between 2016–20 and 2021–25, shrinking its global export share from 21% to 6.8%.
The SIPRI report indicates that Russia was the sole supplier among the world’s top ten arms exporters to contract, absorbing steep delivery declines to Algeria, China, and Egypt. The SIPRI dataset further shows that nearly three-quarters of these diminished exports were concentrated in India, China, and Belarus, while pending foreign orders fell sharply behind rival suppliers.
To avoid entanglement in Russia’s geopolitical decline and assert national sovereignty, Fried argues that Central Asian states are building strategic counterweights through expanded partnerships with China, Turkey, the European Union, the United States, and India.
Arms sales are a key influence, as client states depend on external suppliers for training, updates, support, and parts. This dependency can subordinate their foreign and defense policies to suppliers’ interests. For Central Asian states, diversifying defense suppliers beyond Russia to India and China helps protect sovereignty.
From India’s perspective, the sale of Akash missiles to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan can be seen as part of its “Necklace of Diamonds” strategy, formulated in response to perceived strategic encirclement by China through the Belt and Road Initiative.
As China links Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka via arms sales and port infrastructure, India fears a multi-front conflict. Pakistan in Kashmir and China in the Himalayas pose threats, while Bangladesh could pin down Indian military resources and attention in the Siliguri Corridor. The Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka could potentially facilitate Chinese naval activities in the Indian Ocean.
In response, the Indian government has steadily expanded its economic and defense partnerships across Central and Southeast Asia. India’s weapons transfers to states along China’s periphery—supplying Akash surface-to-air missiles to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, alongside Brahmos supersonic anti-ship missiles to the Philippines and Indonesia—function as vital military components of India’s counter-encirclement strategy against China.
Chinese policymakers see arms sales to Central Asia as a way to align regional governments with China’s economic and military goals. Central Asia is a key Belt and Road hub, has significant energy resources and minerals, and acts as a geopolitical buffer zone with Russia.
The Chinese government frequently bundles economic investments and defense assistance into comprehensive package deals. Beyond exporting J-10CE combat aircraft to Uzbekistan, Gokhan Tekir notes in a February 2026 article in the Journal of Eurasian Studies that China has become Uzbekistan’s leading trading partner and primary foreign investor.
In that article, Tekir highlights how Chinese state enterprises are spearheading landmark infrastructure projects, including the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway and dedicated special economic zones, to transform the landlocked country into a regional transit corridor.
These intersecting developments raise the question of how Russia will respond to the perceived erosion of its traditional sphere of influence across Central Asia.
In a January 2025 Geopolitical Monitor article, Eldaniz Gusseinov and Sardor Allayarov argue that despite the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia preserves enduring strategic influence across the region through structural economic interdependence, institutional defense commitments, and close political ties among governing elites.
Gusseinov and Allayarov observe that bilateral trade between Russia and Central Asian nations reached approximately US$44 billion in 2023, representing one-third of the region’s overall trade turnover. In addition, Gusseinov and Allayarov report that over half of these mutual settlements were processed in local currencies via sanction-circumventing transit corridors.
In the defense arena, Gusseinov and Allayarov emphasize that Russia anchors regional security architecture through Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) mutual defense pacts with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, forward military garrisons,and integrated air defense arrangements, such as Russian air deployments at Kant Airbase in Kyrgyzstan and delivered S-300 surface-to-air missile systems in Tajikistan.
Furthermore, Gusseinov and Allayarov write that regular multilateral security council summits and deeply rooted ties between regional leaderships ensure Russia retains an indispensable geopolitical position, even as Central Asian governments pursue multi-vector diplomatic strategies.
Ultimately, as rival external powers transform Central Asia into an active proving ground for competing geopolitical designs, long-term regional stability will depend on whether Central Asian leaders can successfully exploit this defense multipolarity to preserve their strategic autonomy without igniting dangerous friction among their primary security partners.
