From MT:
“Russia’s Involvement in
Kazakhstan’s Crisis Could Have Wide Implications”
(Russian troops leaving for
Kazakhstan on Thursday morning.)
Experts believe Moscow risks
being sucked into neighboring unrest and having to manage strategic instability
on two fronts. Russia’s deployment of troops as part of a military alliance to
put down growing protest in neighboring Kazakhstan will have major
ramifications for Moscow’s foreign and domestic policy, experts told the Moscow
Times on Thursday. “For now, this is less an armed intervention than a police
operation,” said Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs
Council (RIAC), a Kremlin-linked think tank. “But if it drags on, consequences
for Russia could mount up.”
The deployment of 3,000 Russian
paratroopers came after Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made a formal
request for assistance to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a
post-Soviet military alliance led by Russia. Alongside Russia, CSTO member
states Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan sent troop contingents to
Kazakhstan, an important regional power with vast energy resources and a
founding member of the Eurasian Economic Union, a Russia-led regional trade
bloc. Tokayev said that intervention was necessary to counter a “terrorist
threat” after protests against a fuel price hike spread nationwide, with
demonstrators in Kazakhstan’s commercial capital Almaty seizing weapons,
setting government buildings alight and shutting down the country’s main
international airport.
Kazakh media have reported that
at least twelve police officers have been killed during the unrest, with
“dozens” more fatalities reported. On
Thursday morning, footage circulated on social media showed Kazakh army units
exchanging gunfire with armed opponents as they attempted to retake Almaty. For
many Russian observers, the sudden explosion of unrest in a country otherwise
known for political stability, underlines a sense that intervention — which
until only hours before Tokayev’s plea for help had been sworn off by the
Kremlin — was unavoidable. “I don’t think Russia had any choice but to
intervene,” said RIAC’s Kortunov, who pointed to a 2020 revolution in
Kazakhstan’s Central Asian neighbor Kyrgyzstan, and last year’s Taliban
takeover in Afghanistan. “Given how violent the unrest was and how unstable the
region is, this seems like it was the only option,'' he added. “But it’s
important that this is a short, time-limited operation and that we don’t get
sucked in.
The crisis in Kazakhstan comes at
an awkward time for Russia. With tensions with the West on the rise amid a
months-long military buildup on the Ukrainian border and fears of war, Russian
has moved westward many of the units it usually deploys in Siberia and the
Urals, along its frontier with Kazakhstan. As reports of unrest spread across
Kazakhstan on Wednesday, parts of the pro-Kremlin media labeled the events a
“Maidan”, referring to the 2014 revolution in Ukraine that touched off that
country’s break with Russia, and accused the West of contriving the
disturbances ahead of high-stakes U.S.-Russia talks this month. Tokayev
likewise claimed that his country was under “external attack” from “bands of
terrorists.”
However, with Russia’s armed
forces heavily engaged along the Ukrainian border, and much of its diplomatic
capacity given over to ongoing talks with the U.S. on security guarantees, the
Kazakhstan crisis represents an unwelcome turn of events for Moscow. “The
Kremlin needs to divide [its] attention … and manage strategic instability on
two fronts,” Alexander Baunov, a Russian foreign policy analyst at the Carnegie
Moscow Center think tank, wrote on Twitter. For some experts, the biggest
potential risk is Russia’s getting sucked into Kazakhstan’s domestic disputes.
Though Kazakhstan has a large
Russian majority, and the country’s north has sometimes been the object of
irredentist dreams, Russo-Kazakh relations have been generally friendly since
the end of the U.S.S.R. With Russia now assuming a leading role in underwriting
Kazakhstan’s government, RIAC’s Kortunov fears an outpouring of Kazakh
nationalism and disruption of the country’s fragile internal ethnic balance. Previous
Russian interventions in post-Soviet countries have seen friendly states take
sharp anti-Russian turns, Kortunov noted. “There’s a real chance that we could
see the rise of anti-Russian sentiment in Kazakhstan, along the lines of
Ukraine or Georgia,” he said.
Domestic risks The crisis
in Kazakhstan is also likely to impinge on Russia’s domestic politics. Though
both countries have been largely stable under long-standing authoritarian
regimes, widespread economic frustrations and inequality have eaten away at
both governments’ popular standing. In Russia, as in Kazakhstan,
unpopular socio-economic reforms including a 2018 pension age increase, and
wage stagnation have driven down the president’s once sky-high approval rating.
A recent Levada Center poll showed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
electoral rating — the number of Russians ready to vote for his re-election —
at 32%, a record low. “Putin generally does believe in his own
popularity,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik, a political
consultancy firm. “But the events in Kazakhstan could make him doubt how
sustainable that popularity really is.” For some opposition-minded
Russians, recalling how the outbreak of unrest in Belarus in summer 2020
presaged an unprecedented crackdown at home, events in Kazakhstan bodes ill for
Russian liberties. “We’ll be the ones to pay for the Kazakhs’ freedom,” wrote
Kirill Martynov, deputy editor of Russia’s independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper,
on Twitter, predicting a crackdown by Russian security services fearing copycat
protests across the border.
Grip on power For others,
the protests in Kazakhstan — which were in large part directed against
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country’s founding president who resigned in 2019 but
still retains extensive behind-the-scenes powers — could influence Vladimir
Putin’s choice on whether to stay in office or not. After Nazarbayev —
who is personally close to Putin — departed from the presidency to head his
country’s powerful Security Council, some observers suggested that the Russian
president might eventually follow the Kazakh model, by handing over day-to-day
responsibilities to a hand-picked successor while retaining ultimate control.
However, the outpouring of rage against the man who has led Kazakhstan
since it was part of the Soviet Union, including scenes of a Nazarbayev statue
in the city of Taldykorgan being felled by protesters, may lead Putin to
conclude that loosening his grip on power is dangerous. Tokayev’s
Wednesday announcement that he was taking over the country’s Security Council,
displacing his erstwhile patron, only underlines the risks of any handover of
power. “Kazakh events make [the] Kazakhstan power transit scenario
virtually impossible for Russia,” wrote Carnegie’s Baunov. “Now Putin
will hardly be inclined to leave his position to a successor.”
^ 3,000 Russian Paratroopers are
now in Kazakhstan. All to keep a 30 year Dictatorship going.
So begins another Russian
Occupation: Transnistria (Moldova) since 1992; South Ossetia (Georgia) since
2008; Abkhazia (Georgia) since 2008; Crimea (Ukraine) since 2014; Donbas
(Ukraine) since 2014 and now Kazakhstan since 2022.
I feel sorry for the Kazakh
people as well as my Kazakh Friends (in Kazakhstan, in Russia, in Israel and in
the US.) ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.