This paper is aimed at the analysis of how Russia and its close neighbours – the five post-Soviet Central Asian states – cooperate in the area of sport. Sport becomes a topic of interest due to forming a meaningful aspect of humanitarian cooperation, one of the sources for the development of extensive people-to-people exchanges and informal communication between the respective societies, as well as an instrument for enabling the self-empowerment of states at the international level. Russia’s partnerships with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are discussed to identify what sporting formats are involved in each relationship and whether these arrangements are implemented by the countries in the form of bilateral agreements. In addition, the development dynamics of the cooperation over the recent decade are traced in terms of what benefits accrue to each of the partner states. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.