Co-Founder and Head of Research
Nightingale Int.
Eldaniz Gusseinov is a geopolitical analyst specializing in trade corridors, energy transitions, and the strategic behavior of middle powers across Eurasia. As Chief of Research at Nightingale, he leads research design, foresight modeling, and strategic partnerships with academic, governmental, and private sector actors. Eldaniz has a distinguished track record of shaping debates on Central Asia’s role in global geopolitics through his work with leading think tanks and academic institutions across Europe and Central Asia.
An expert in regional integration and transport infrastructure, he has authored and edited numerous analytical papers on critical minerals policy—a key focus for the future of Eurasian industry. His expertise is frequently sought by global media; he has provided expert commentary for prominent outlets including The Diplomat, Nikkei Asia, Deutsche Welle, and The National Interest. In addition to his institutional roles, Eldaniz serves as a private researcher for several international companies and think tanks, providing tailored insights into the Eurasian market.
Critical Minerals, Great Powers, and Kazakhstan’s Multi-Vector Reality
Critical minerals have become a proxy battleground for great-power influence, and Kazakhstan sits at the intersection of competing supply chains. This presentation offers a 360 degrees data-led view of how “multi-vector” foreign policy plays out on when investment decisions, licensing outcomes and offtake discussions begin to cluster around a small number of external partners.
We begin with an investment-mapping exercise that tracks Chinese entry points across Kazakhstan’s mining sector and asks a simple question: at what point does project concentration become strategic dependency? From there, we test Kazakhstan’s diversification options across China, Russia, Turkey, the US, the EU and other Western partners, using scenario logic that identifies the trade-offs that decision-makers rarely state explicitly.
The final section concentrates on uranium, where Kazakhstan’s state-backed champion Kazatomprom remains central to global supply, and examines how changing joint-venture structures and recent ownership transfers in the broader sector can change investors’ risk calculus in the absence of a single headline policy reversal.
We close by translating the analysis into a forward-looking “watchlist” for 2026–2030: the policy levers most likely to be used, the partnerships most likely to be renegotiated, the practical questions investors should ask before committing capital, and how to structure engagement to preserve maximum optionality under uncertainty.
