Ridiculous. Astana is on a similar latitude to Mumbai. Why would UEFA allow that? All it really means for other UEFA teams is an absurdly long flight.
FWIW, I'm not a huge fan of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey being in UEFA either. If you're on the Asian continent, you should play in the Asian federation....(I know most of Russia is in Asia as well, but Moscow is European, as well as most of their other footballing cities.)
If I were a Kazakh, I'd want to play in the federation that offered an easier path to the World Cup.