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President Trump has made it easier for countries that are close to Russia and China to build ties with the United States. Those countries are embracing the opportunity.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, with leaders of other Central Asian countries, at the White House on Thursday. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Nov. 7, 2025, 5:14 p.m. ET

In Western Europe and East Asia, President Trump’s foreign policy has fed fears of political turmoil and financial pain among America’s traditional allies.

But to a swath of mostly authoritarian countries in between, Mr. Trump’s role looks different. In Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia, countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union are reaping the benefits of newfound attention from Washington.

That attention was on display on Thursday evening as Mr. Trump became the first president to host the leaders of all five Central Asian countries at the White House. It was a striking tableau, both because of long-running human-rights concerns and because the region’s power players are American adversaries: Russia and China.

Mr. Trump has changed the equation. His outreach to Moscow, and now his easing of tensions with Beijing, have made it easier for countries that are close to Russia and China to build ties with the United States. And those countries are embracing the opportunity, partly because a closer relationship with Washington is giving them leverage in dealing with Moscow and Beijing.

Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, told The New York Times in an interview before his White House visit on Thursday that “the United States of America has the right to be properly present” in his country. He praised Mr. Trump’s trade truce with China as well as his engagement with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“It’s crucial for major powers to find common ground with one another,” Mr. Tokayev said. “That’s why I was pleased, one might say, with the deal between China and the United States.”

In Central Asia, the most influential geopolitical player remains Russia, which still considers the region as part of its rightful sphere of influence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reverberated across the region, where governments have struggled to avoid aligning themselves with Mr. Putin’s war while maintaining political and economic ties with Moscow.

Gerard Toal, a professor of government and international affairs at Virginia Tech, said the leaders of the former Soviet republics who were improving relations with Mr. Trump knew they would never get away from Moscow’s hegemonic power. But they are seeking “multiple options,” he said, and are trying to show the Kremlin they have power to maneuver.

“Even in just going to the White House, you are signaling to the Kremlin you have independent agency,” Mr. Toal said.

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan arrived at the White House in August to sign a peace pledge to end a long and bloody conflict. It was a demonstration of Russia’s loss of influence in a region where the Kremlin had previously tried to play the role of peacemaker.

In the process, the leaders gave the United States exclusive development rights over a transit corridor that would connect two parts of Azerbaijan through Armenian territory, naming it the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.

Even Belarus, Russia’s closest international ally, has overcome its international pariah status to build ties with the Trump administration. The White House has turned to Belarus’s authoritarian ruler, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, as a back channel in negotiations with Moscow.

In exchange for sanctions relief, the Belarusian leader has released dozens of political prisoners at the request of the Trump administration. The Belarusian human rights group Viasna said that 1,242 political prisoners remained jailed in Belarus as of last month.

Mr. Trump’s gathering on Thursday advanced an effort that began under President Barack Obama to hold joint meetings with the five Central Asian countries. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. held the inaugural U.S. summit with the countries’ leaders in 2023, promising both to advance human rights and help develop the region’s “vast mineral wealth.”

Mr. Trump has dropped the human rights concerns and magnified the focus on deal-making.

For Central Asian leaders, “it’s much more comfortable to deal with Trump,” said Temur Umarov, an analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank in Berlin. “You can do business — and only business — with him.”

At a deal-making event held in a sunny room at the Kennedy Center on Thursday afternoon, government officials and industry executives from the United States and Central Asia mingled to the sound of smooth jazz and waited for their turn to climb onstage and shake hands with Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce.

In brief remarks, Mr. Lutnick held out the promise of sales of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips, airplanes and other technology, and welcomed Central Asian initiatives focused on energy diversification and logistics. He said America was “open for business,” including for sales to allies of the best semiconductors, which, he added, was “a complete change from the prior Biden administration.”

“The U.S. economy is on fire,” Mr. Lutnick said. “You can feel it.”

Airlines from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan committed to purchase dozens of Boeing airplanes, while Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan promised to buy billions of dollars in agricultural machinery from John Deere. Kyrgyzstan said it would purchase American rail construction and engineering services. Kazakhstan also said it would procure up to $2 billion in A.I. chips in a partnership with OpenAI and Nvidia. It’s unclear how many of the deals were newly signed and how many had been previously negotiated.

One senior Central Asian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said their country was heartened by Mr. Lutnick’s personal involvement. While the Biden administration had focused on “B2B” — business-to-business — negotiations, the official said, “now we’ve started to trade on the level of G2G” — government-to-government.

Cove Capital, a mining-focused firm based in New York and Australia, thanked Mr. Lutnick on Thursday for his “unwavering support” in securing a deal for the company to help develop a huge Kazakh deposit of tungsten, a wear-resistant metal important for weapons manufacturing.

Mr. Tokayev, the Kazakh president, said he had personally approved the tungsten deal. He praised the Trump administration for its “efficiency and pragmatism.”

Mr. Trump, in turn, lauded Mr. Tokayev in September for a $4 billion agreement with a U.S. company to buy 300 locomotives. And he praised the president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, for what he said was an $8 billion deal by the country’s national airline to buy as many as 22 Boeing Dreamliner jets.

Luke Coffey, an analyst at the Hudson Institute who has encouraged the Trump administration to pursue closer ties with Central Asia, said in an interview that the United States and Central Asian countries were finding common ground because of “the transactionalism that Trump prefers and that the leaders in this region prefer.”

Indeed, there was no mention in the public elements of the Central Asia summit of what activists say are persistent — and in some cases, growing — human rights concerns across the region. Before this week’s event, Turkmenistan, an authoritarian nation that the democracy-focused nonprofit Freedom House ranks below North Korea and Sudan in its “Freedom in the World” index measuring civil rights and political liberties, had not had a leader visit the White House since 1998.

Last week, the Kazakh Parliament moved forward with a bill that would punish what it called “L.G.B.T. propaganda” with as many as 10 days in prison, mirroring similar laws in Russia. Mr. Tokayev, in the interview on Thursday, said the Kazakh government had “nothing to do” with the bill, describing it as a grass-roots initiative. He added that while people should not be punished for being gay, “it would also be wrong to instill these values, especially among children.”

Mr. Tokayev previously praised what he called Mr. Trump’s efforts to “restore traditional moral values.” Sitting across from Mr. Trump at the White House on Thursday, he went further: The U.S. president “inspires me,” he said, to pursue a “law and order” strategy in Kazakhstan.

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.

Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.

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