Kavkaz

When a Russian-led military force intervened earlier this month, it did more than help Kazakh President Qasym-Johart Toqayev restore and strengthen his grip on power following days of protest and violent clashes with security forces. The intervention brought to the fore a brewing competition for spheres of influence in Eurasia …

Freedom of religion and belief and interlinked human rights are under increasing threat in Kyrgyzstan. Forum 18’s survey analysis documents: increasing “legal” restrictions on the freedom of religion and belief; Ahmadi Muslims being prevented from meeting since 2011, and refusal to allow the Falun Gong spiritual movement to exist; state …

Russia’s intervention in Kazakhstan contains a cautionary message for Gulf foreign ministers visiting Beijing this week. The intervention to stabilize the government of Kazakh President Kassym-Johart Tokayev, following mass protests, cemented Russia’s primacy when it comes to security in Central Asia, a swathe of land that is as much Russia’s …

Today, more than 150 years after the end of the Russian-Circassian War ended, and despite all the twists and turns of Russian policy, there are almost exactly the same number of Russian troops in the North Caucasus as there were at the peak of the war there in the nineteenth …

The riots in Kazakhstan may have abated, but the country’s problems remain unresolved, and its leaders’ challenges have never been greater. Dr Neil Melvin, RUSI’s Director of International Security Studies, identifies what these are. Riots prompted by higher fuel prices are not exactly unusual. We have seen them in places …

The Russian-led ‘peacekeeping’ operation has helped to restore state order, but how will it respond to an escalation of violence? The outbreak of unrest across Kazakhstan at the beginning of 2022 took international audiences by surprise. The protests, which were triggered by rising fuel prices, quickly morphed into demonstrations across …

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev says troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will begin withdrawing from Kazakhstan in two days as the situation calmed following the deadliest violence in the ex-Soviet republic’s three decades of independence from Moscow. In a televised address to parliament on January 11, Toqaev …

Russia’s military intervention in Kazakhstan to support the country’s embattled regime was an effort by Moscow to help head off a popular revolt attempting to unseat a friendly autocrat in a neighboring country. And a week after mass protests and subsequent riots first swept Kazakhstan, the Kremlin’s gamble appears to …

More even than most crises, the events unfolding in Kazakhstan in recent days can be read in myriad ways. On one level, it clearly appears to have resulted in yet another opportunity for Russian President Vladimir Putin to claw back control over domains lost by the Kremlin following the demise …

What began as peaceful protests that quickly enveloped Kazakhstan in major upheaval just after the new year seems to have spawned something quite different — a battle for control of the upper echelons of power in the country. Mass protests in recent days in dozens of cities over poor socioeconomic …