Kazakhstan is extremely careful in its relations with Russian Federation. It is the fact that half of its population is Russian who live in the northern part of the country where industry is developed. The use of Caspian Sea resources and influence of this fact on the relations between Kazakhstan and Russia is very important for Kazakhstan government. Firstly Kazakhstan made an attempt to support the idea that Caspian Sea should be determined as a sea that is connected to World Ocean through Volga-Don and Volga-Baltic canals. As a matter of fact Kazakhstan shares its position with Azerbaijan. Along with this Kazakhstan never forgets to carefully analyze its relations with Russia. Kazakhstan has monopolistic control over any deposits that is close to its coasts. Kazakhstan also supported the proposal of Russia on the division of energy supply deposits at the bottom of Caspian Sea and the first agreement on this issue was signed between those countries in 1998. From this moment new stage in negotiations on determination of Caspian Sea legal status began, because Russia and Kazakhstan made two aspects in this issue – status of Caspian Sea surface and status of Caspian Sea depth. That means all the resource on the surface can be used jointly, but deposits in the depth should be divided among the coastal countries through agreements.
