From Reuters:
“Kazakhstan ends unlimited
stay for Russians”
(Russian citizens visit a public
service centre to receive an individual identification number for foreigners in
the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, October 3, 2022.)
Kazakhstan will no longer allow
Russian citizens to stay in the Central Asian country indefinitely by doing
so-called visa runs every three months, according to a government directive
published this week. The Astana government will disallow the practice from Jan.
26, requiring Russians and citizens of other members of the Eurasian Economic
Union, a post-Soviet bloc, to leave the country for at least 90 days after the
permitted three-month stay. The Interior Ministry, which proposed the reform,
has said it would give the state greater control over immigration.
Tens of thousands of Russians,
mostly young and middle-aged men, relocated to Kazakhstan last year as Moscow,
embroiled in the Ukraine conflict, launched its first conscription campaign
since World War Two. The Russian language is widely spoken in Kazakhstan and
the two countries share the world's longest continuous land border, making
Kazakhstan a popular choice among Russians fleeing the draft. The ability to
stay in the country de facto indefinitely - by leaving it and reentering every
90 days - has been another important factor.
However, the country has
struggled to cope with the influx of Russians. Authorities in Kazakhstan have
said the unusually large inflows contributed to inflation, which soared to more
than 20% last year, its highest since the 1990s. The war in Ukraine has also
strained ties between Moscow and Astana as the latter has refused to support
its former Soviet overlord and called for peace.
^ Kazakhstan has to play a fine balancing
act between Putin and Russia and the US and the West. Kazakhstan has long had
to deal with things Russians “invading” its society (Ethnic Russians as well as
the Russian Language.)
Even before Russia’s War in
Ukraine there were close to 3 Million Ethnic Russians (15% of the Population)
living in Kazakhstan - due to Czarist
and Soviet Policies of deporting Russians they didn’t like to Kazakhstan for
nearly 200 years.
The Ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan
(including ones that were born and have only lived in Kazakhstan) tend to only
speak the Russian Language (not even try to learn Kazakh) and tend to care more
about what Moscow says and does than what Astana says and does. That tends to
be the case for the Ethnic Russians living throughout the Non-Russian Former
Soviet Union (ie. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)
That comes from the view that
being Ethnically Russian in the Czarist Empire as well as in the Soviet Union
was the “best” Ethnicity.
The Kazakhs moved their Capital
from Almaty (in the southern part of the country) to Astana (in the northern
part of the country – closer to their border with Russia) after Independence as
well as are moving away from Kazakh using the Cyrillic Alphabet (like Russian)
to Kazakh using the Latin Alphabet – all to try and distance itself from Russia
as much as they can.
This latest move – eliminating Visa Runs - is a small step that Kazakhstan can take to
help them continue to distance themselves from being flooded with Russians as
well as not angering Putin (since Russia also eliminated Visa Runs.)
When Russians living in Kazakhstan
since the War in Ukraine began are forced to leave their “sanctuary” and return
to Russia so they can be Mobilized and die as Cannon Fodder in Ukraine then
hopefully more Russians inside Russia will start to actively protest Putin, his
Zs and the War in Ukraine and bring an end to all three. ^
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