Investigation
Methadone by message: who supplies Nurzhan
Street methadone and fentanyl analogues reach Nurzhan by freight from Shymkent and are sold through anonymous channels on the Tulpar app. Police officers, users and a former courier say one network controls most of it.
From the Irad Times of 13 November 2025.
In Nurzhan, buying methadone takes a telephone and about ten minutes. Users told the Times that they find a seller through an anonymous channel on the Tulpar messaging app, pay by transfer and receive a photograph of a hiding place, usually a crack in a wall or a magnet under a railing, within a few streets of their home. The drugs, street methadone and, since about 2020, fentanyl analogues, are cheaper than heroin ever was and far more dangerous.
Doctors at the Nurzhan city hospital say they now see an overdose almost every night. The Ministry of Health does not publish figures.
The freight route
Over five months the Times interviewed nine users, two serving police officers, a doctor, a former courier and a freight agent at the Nurzhan rail station. Their accounts agree on the route: the drugs come from Russian distribution networks by freight from Shymkent and are unloaded at the rail station, hidden in consignments of car parts and building materials.
They also agree on a name. All four officials and the former courier said that most of the trade is controlled by the network of Rinat Galimov, 56, a Nurzhan businessman with a freight-forwarding company at the rail station and interests in scrap metal and car imports. Mr. Galimov was named in the racketeering at the city's bazaars in the 1990s and was arrested in 1998, but acquitted. He has never been charged in Irad.
“We are told which doors”
The two police officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the network enjoys protection from officers of the Gendarmerie. “We are told which doors not to knock on,” one said. The Times has not been able to confirm who gives those instructions. Since 2023 the network has tried to extend its trade south, to Tash-Kömür and Iyık Janyl, where it has met the resistance of the crews of Joomart Turdakunov. Arsons and two killings on the Tash-Kömür road this year have been attributed to the rivalry.
Through his lawyer, Mr. Galimov said he had “no link to drugs or to any Russian criminal group” and that he ran “a lawful freight business”. The Gendarmerie did not answer our questions. Tulpar did not respond to a request for comment.
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