Kavkaz

Kazakh President Announces CSTO Troop Withdrawal, Criticizes Predecessor

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 …

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Will The Crisis In Kazakhstan Affect Putin’s Plans For Ukraine? – Analysis

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 …

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Nazarbayev’s Fate in Kazakhstan Is a Cautionary Tale for Putin and Xi

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 …

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Is A Battle For Power Raging Within Kazakhstan’s Government? – Analysis

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 …

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Kazakhstan On The Brink – Analysis

Since its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan, a Central Asian Republic, witnessed its biggest public protest on 2 January 2022. The people of the western town of Zhanaozen stormed the streets, protesting against the halt of state subsidies on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), one of the primary vehicle fuels. The surge …

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The Consequences Of Inviting Russian-Led CSTO Troops Into Kazakhstan – Analysis

Sparked by a small protest over a fuel price increase in the western oil town of Zhanaozen a few days earlier, angry crowds flooded the streets and squares of Kazakhstan’s major towns and cities on January 5, shouting their discontent with the authoritarian government’s domestic policies. Alarmed by the scale …

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Kazakh President Gives Stark ‘Shoot-To-Kill’ Order Amid Unprecedented Uprising

President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has issued a stark warning to protesters in Kazakhstan that he has given security personnel a green light to “shoot to kill” even as the nation’s police forces, bolstered by a Russian-led troop contingent, appeared to be in control of most cities in Kazakhstan after dozens were …

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Kazakhstan crisis heightens instability in Central Asia

The political crisis in Kazakhstan, which began on January 2 with mass protests against gas price hikes, has become a focal point of geopolitical and social tensions across Central Asia. With the support of the Kremlin, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s government has cracked down on the protests with extraordinary violence, turning …

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Gunfire Underway in Kazakhstan’s Almaty, Counterterrorist Operation Still Ongoing

According to authorities, initially peaceful protests in Kazakhstan, spurred by a twofold increase in fuel prices on January 1, swiftly devolved into deadly violence, killing at least seven police officers and dozens of attackers. Gunfire is underway in the center of Kazakhstan’s Almaty, and the authorities are conducting a counterterrorist …

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Is Kazakhstan Russia’s Next Ukraine? – Analysis

With Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s borders, it’s not only Ukrainians who worry about what President Vladimir Putin may have in store for them. It’s Kazakhs too. For now, Kazakhs don’t have to be immediately concerned about Russian troop movements. What unsettles them is years of Russian rhetoric, spearheaded by …

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