Kazakhstan to abide by West's sanctions on Russia - presidential office

NUR-SULTAN. April 1 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan will not serve as a tool for circumventing the United States' and European Union's sanctions on Russia, Timur Suleimenov, first deputy chief of the Kazakh presidential office, said in an interview with Euractiv.

Suleimenov said one of the objectives of his visit to the European Union is to "demonstrate to our European partners that Kazakhstan will not be a tool to circumvent the sanctions on Russia by the U.S. and the EU."

"We are going to abide by the sanctions. Even though we are part of the Economic Union with Russia, Belarus and other countries, we are also part of the international community. Therefore, the last thing we want is secondary sanctions of the U.S. and the EU to be applied to Kazakhstan," he said.

"We will continue to invest in Russia and attract investment for Russia: there is no way for our economy to do it differently," Suleimenov said.

"But we will do our best to control the sanctioned goods. We will do our best to control any investment from a sanctioned person or entity in Kazakhstan, and this is something we wanted to convey to Europeans openly. To demonstrate that we have a system in place, and the system is here, unfortunately, to stay for a long period," he said.