Karaganda sits on the steppe of central Kazakhstan. Wikipedia’s MiG-31 article says Kazakhstan kept about 50 MiG-31s after 1991 and names the 610th Air Base at Sary-Arka as their only base. FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2015, as cited by Wikipedia, listed MiG-31s, Su-27s and Su-25s at the base, an unusually mixed line-up of interceptors, air-superiority fighters and attack aircraft.

The Foxhound was expensive to keep. On 16 April 2020 a Kazakh MiG-31 crashed in Karaganda region; Tengrinews later recalled that it came down during preparation for combat duty and that MiG-31 flights were suspended until the investigation ended. The type was retired in 2023 and offered at auction.

Reports then claimed that retired Kazakh MiG-31s had been sold to the United States, either as aggressor aircraft or for Ukraine. Wikipedia records that these reports were refuted, and the Kazakh government said its auction was open only to local entities. Where the aircraft are now has not been established.

Wikipedia lists four jet bases for the Air Defence Forces: the 600th Guards at Zhetigen, the 602nd at Shymkent, the 604th at Taldykorgan and the 610th at Karaganda. Of the four, Karaganda had the widest spread of types in FlightGlobal’s 2015 directory, with interceptors, air-superiority fighters and attack aircraft on one airfield. The MiG-31s have gone; whether the Su-27s and Su-25s listed in 2015 are still here was not confirmed by an official source.

The base has also shaped the service’s leaders. Dauren Kossanov, who commanded the Air Defence Forces from 2013 to 2019 and again from 2022, and became defence minister in June 2025, served as chief of staff at the Karaganda air base earlier in his career, according to his Wikipedia biography. The years of his posting were not given.

The Su-30SM, first delivered to Taldykorgan in 2015, was flying from Karaganda by 2021. That August the Astana Times reported that Senior Lieutenant Ardana Botai of the Karaganda air base had flown for the first time as a Su-30SM crew commander. She had come from civil aviation: a graduate of the Civil Aviation Academy in Almaty, she had 240 flying hours, 40 of them at the State Aviation Centre in the capital, on TL-2000, Tecnam P2002 and Diamond DA42 light aircraft.

Before her first flight in command she spent several months at the Taldykorgan aviation base. The commander of the Air Defence Forces, Lieutenant General of Aviation Nurlan Ormanbetov, marked it as a first in the history of the Kazakh armed forces. Botai named the wartime pilots Khiuaz Dospanova and Nurken Abdirov as her inspiration.

How many Su-30SMs fly from Karaganda has not been published. Wikipedia counts 29 in Kazakh service in 2024 across the force; the Ministry of Defence gives no figures by base. Its own public statements, such as the one after the February 2026 crash, confirm only that Su-30SMs fly training sorties from the airport.

The airport’s civil history runs parallel. Built in 1934 and moved in 1944, it was rebuilt in 1980 with a new terminal and a modernised runway that could take heavier aircraft, gained international status in 1992 and became an independent company in 1997, according to Wikipedia. Its operator today is JSC Sary-Arka International Airport, which the AIP lists alongside a military unit responsible for a fuel installation.

Two civil episodes stand out. On 27 October 1959 a Li-2 crashed near Karaganda in poor weather, killing one passenger and injuring seven. On 29 November 2010 a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 made an emergency landing here after losing cabin pressure.

The base’s most recent emergency was its own. On 25 February 2026 at 16:19 local time a Su-30SM on a planned training flight crashed 2 km from the airport. The Ministry of Defence said both pilots had ejected and were under medical supervision, that there was no threat to the population, and that a commission led by its flight-safety department would investigate.