The late February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia sent shockwaves throughout the world. Alongside the millions of displaced Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands of Russians, opposed to the war or the regime, now needed to find themselves a new place to live, and quickly.

By mid-March, some 300,000 Russian citizens had left the country. By early October, after the announcement of partial mobilisation decree, the number reached approximately 900,000.

A 2022 study from the University of Central Asia estimates that as many as 100,000 Russian émigrés relocated to Kazakhstan, mostly consisting of “highskill, relatively young, and economically active people from large Russian cities”.

Among those was Arina Nikolskaya – the World’s 50 Best Bars Academy chair for Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Baltics who, prior to February 2022, spearheaded the Moscow Bar Show.

“I couldn't stay,” says Nikolskaya.  “Apart from condemning the whole system, being from a family of politically oppressed people and fearing being locked inside the country, half of my businesses were in Russia, the other half in Ukraine – I couldn’t do anything.”

Initially Nikolskaya and husband Max Kravi settled in Georgia, but after four months realised that the bar scene wasn’t quite ready for an event. It was then the pair found Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, a place that Nikolskaya had last visited before the pandemic but had grown into a budding bar community.

Daria Bezhina and Georgiy Kucherenko are two former Moscow bartenders who moved to Almaty prior to Nikolskaya and the 2022 invasion. The duo opened Cëcë, an izakaya-style restaurant, at the end of 2022.

Originally in an old car wash underneath the city’s Hotel Kazakhstan, the business moved to a new, larger site in 2024 and in the same year was shortlisted for the Best Cocktail Menu award at The World’s 50 Best Bars for its anti-war themed list of non-alcoholic cocktails.

“I was a very young bartender when I moved here,” says Bezhina, who was born in Kazakhstan but began her career in Moscow. “I had just won a [cocktail] competition in Russia and ABR restaurant group invited me to Almaty to help with opening a bar called Publica in 2017.

“When I first moved back, we had only two or three bars. Now, the community is really growing. What I like about the community is how open-hearted it is, it’s something that I like in Kazakh people, – even the most beginner, novice bartender is welcome. In Moscow, if you wanted to be part of the community, you needed to build your name and your reputation first or people weren’t interested in speaking to you. People are so welcoming here.”

Kazakhstan prides itself on its open-armed approach. The Russians that arrived in 2022 are a new chapter in an old story. Many Russians found refuge in the country during the revolution of 1905-1907, hundreds of thousands of Koreans settled in the region following the Japanese colonisation of Korea in 1910 and Soviet deportations in the 1930s. Before that, it was a key point along the Silk Road and historically a nomadic region, so the mixing of peoples was commonplace.

Changing scene

Nikolskaya’s arrival coincided with a change in the bar scene of Almaty. The bar scene had developed into something worth celebrating but lacked exposure. Alongside the Nomad Bar Show, which first ran in 2023, Nikolskaya and Kravi launched the Shift Project – a collective of local bartenders that aims to shine a light on the region through international guest shifts, mentorships and globally-focused events in Almaty, like the recent Almaty Bar Shift which brought several global voices to the city.

“When I come here three years ago, it was impossible to imagine something like the Shift Project,” says Kucherenko. “The scene had been stuck at the same stage for a while but the Shift Project opened so many new opportunities. Before, it was impossible to talk to brands about investment, they had no understanding of why we needed to spend money to grow the industry. They didn’t understand why we wanted to bring in great bartenders and influential speakers or to visit other countries.

“Now, it’s absolutely crazy. We’re still working with very small budgets but now we have help from the tourism bureau, from the government, and some brands – it’s a really important step in the right direction.

The Shift Project has been instrumental in boosting Almaty’s signal across the international bar circuit, but this isn’t a case of creating a noise where there was only silence, Almaty was on the move before the arrival of the Shift Project.

Rustam Kuzhagaliyev who, following a career in oil and gas – the country’s largest industry – opened Le Janbyr in 2018, a venue inspired by the ruin-bars of Budapest.

“Back in 2018, there weren’t any bars like it in Almaty, but it appealed to so many people. We didn’t have one type of guest, we had people arriving in amazing cars with their bodyguards sat in one corner, and a group of skaters in another. Because it was the first of its kind in the city, people maybe didn’t know what to make of it, but it was attractive to all sorts of people.

Kuzhagaliyev left Le Janbyr at the beginning of the pandemic and later opened a series of colour-based venues. First Blue Bar, followed by the wine-focused Pink Bar, then beer-focused Red Bar and most recently Purple Bar – a high-volume cocktail spot.

“Perspectives changed after the pandemic. A lot of cocktail bars opened with a strong concept from the beginning. And guests had changed too; there was more awareness about what makes a good cocktail or what kind of bars they wanted to visit. So the community was evolving together.

“When Shift Project started it changed everything again. Now, our bartenders could travel and learn from other great bars. We still weren’t getting much investment from brands but now our team was in Mexico City at Brujas Bar, our team was in Moebius and 1930 in Milan, we were in Jeffer in Pisa and Dr Stravinsky in Barcelona. The main thing slowing us down is investment, but as bartenders become better educated through more travel and there are more internationally focused events like the Almaty Bar Shift, then hopefully the corporations will see that it makes sense to invest in the region.”

Almaty has developed quite the bar crawl. Alongside Cëcë and the bars of Kuzhagaliyev, there’s the mid-century modernist Atelier headed up by Nikita Kupriyev, the house party-cum-five-star dive bar, Domashniy led by Abay Mukambayev, there’s Gruppo 63 cut straight from post-war Italian haute couture. There’s also Barmaglot, Contrast and Adept – a bar founded by Nikita Ivankin who previously ran Insider in Moscow.

So, is Almaty going to be the new Athens of the bar world? It’s unlikely at the moment. Being a long-haul flight from almost every other cocktail hub doesn’t help, but also there’s a frustrating lack of investment from brands into the region. The appetite is there among consumers and operators but without budgets it’ll be almost impossible for those appetites to be sated.

But tourism figures are on the rise, albeit from a low base, and the hospitality scene is moving at pace, so what Almaty does have is a story, and potential.