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Kyiv, Ukraine – Final Friday, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appeared cornered as he sat subsequent to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and Margarita Simonyan, head of the Kremlin-funded RT tv community, which is sanctioned within the West.
The three had been on the primary stage of the Worldwide Financial Discussion board in St Petersburg, Russia’s former imperial capital and Putin’s hometown.
Simonyan requested the Kazakh chief in regards to the “inevitability” and “legality” of what the Kremlin has dubbed a “particular operation” in Ukraine – Europe’s largest armed battle since World Battle II.
“There are totally different opinions about it,” Tokayev, Kazakhstan’s former international minister and the United Nations’ former deputy secretary-general, started diplomatically.
For about two minutes, he ruminated about worldwide regulation, the UN’s Constitution and the “incompatibility” of rights to territorial integrity and self-determination.
“If the proper to self-determination is carried out worldwide, there might be over 600 nations as an alternative of the 193 states which might be at the moment UN members. In fact, that will be chaos,” Tokayev mentioned.
After which he mentioned one thing that appeared to have shattered Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet “strategic partnership” with its former imperial grasp.
“That’s why we received’t recognise Taiwan, Kosovo, [the breakaway Georgian regions of] South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Tokayev mentioned with a faint smile.
“Apparently, the identical precept might be utilized to the quasi-state territories which might be, in our view, Luhansk and Donetsk,” the 2 breakaway areas in southeastern Ukraine, he mentioned.
Each areas seceded in 2014 with Moscow’s navy and monetary backing in a conflict that killed greater than 13,000 folks and uprooted thousands and thousands.
However the Kremlin recognised their “independence” solely virtually eight years later, on February 22, two days earlier than invading Ukraine correct.
Tokayev’s phrases final week enraged many within the Kremlin.
A Russian lawmaker mentioned Tokayev “challenged” Putin – and hinted that Moscow could invade Kazakhstan’s northern areas, which have a big ethnic Russian inhabitants.
“There are various cities with a predominantly Russian inhabitants which have little to do with what was referred to as Kazakhstan,” Konstantin Zatulin informed the Radio Moskva.
“I’d like Astana [the old name of the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan] to not overlook that with associates and companions we don’t increase territorial issues and don’t argue. With the remainder – like, for instance, with Ukraine – all the pieces is feasible,” he mentioned.
And plenty of in Ukraine noticed Tokayev’s spiel as a daring assertion that signifies the “sundown” of Moscow-led political, financial and navy blocs within the former USSR that embody Kazakhstan.
“Kyiv famous the braveness of Tokayev, who might say such phrases in Putin’s face,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch informed Al Jazeera.
He mentioned the Russia-Ukraine conflict – and the crimes dedicated by Russian servicemen in Ukraine – will end in Moscow shedding affect in Kazakhstan and the 4 remaining “stans” of ex-Soviet Central Asia.
“The animal-like cruelty of the [Russian] empire on Ukraine’s soil has horrified even Russia’s conventional allies,” he mentioned.
The principally Muslim, resource-rich area of greater than 65 million is stretched strategically between Russia, China and Afghanistan.
China and Turkey will fill the void – whereas “Russia’s tender underbelly from the Urals to the Altai [Mountains] will now not be the ageing empire’s again yard,” Kushch mentioned.
Dismembering Kazakhstan
Zatulin’s commentary didn’t mark the primary time a Russian political determine questioned Kazakhstan’s very existence.
Shortly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Putin claimed that Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, “created a state on a territory that by no means had a state”.
“Kazakhs by no means had any statehood, he created it,” Putin informed a pro-Kremlin youth group.
Six years later, one other Russian lawmaker raised the stakes by claiming that Kazakhstan’s very existence was nothing however Moscow’s “present”.
“Kazakhstan merely didn’t exist, northern Kazakhstan was uninhabited,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, a United Russia lawmaker mentioned.
“And, truly, Kazakhstan’s territory is a giant present from Russia and the Soviet Union.”
Nikonov’s pedigree made his phrases sound particularly ominous.
His grandfather, Vyacheslav Molotov of bottle-bomb “cocktail” fame, was the USSR’s international minister who signed a pact with Nazi Germany in 1939 to partition Poland – and pave the way in which to World Battle II.
“No one from outdoors gave Kazakhs this territory as a present,” Tokayev retorted in an op-ed printed in Kazakh newspapers in January 2021.
He talked about Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan among the many founders of what would change into Kazakhstan.
On the time, Tokayev was extensively seen as a figurehead handpicked by his predecessor Nazarbayev, who stepped down in 2019, however whose clan retained its affect within the oil-rich nation.
A yr later, Tokayev requested for Moscow’s assist throughout the largest protests in Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet historical past.
Hundreds of younger Kazakhs rallied in a number of cities toppling statues of Nazarbayev, clashing with police and storming authorities buildings.
Tokayev requested the forces of the Russian-led navy alliance of the previous Soviet states to revive order. Referred to as the Collective Safety Treaty Group (CSTO), the bloc consists of Russia and 5 ex-Soviet nations.
The CSTO troops did fly in and helped restore regulation and order – and the transfer was extensively seen as a logo of Moscow’s restored may within the former USSR.
Consequently, Tokayev dramatically undermined the Nazarbayev clan’s clout and have become a full-fledged, unbiased chief – all due to Putin.
And a few in Kazakhstan see his remarks in regards to the Ukrainian separatists as a part of a well-staged political spectacle aimed toward distracting the West’s consideration.
“That is nothing however a sport performed to keep away from sanctions on Kazakhstan,” a well-connected businessman in Kazakhstan’s monetary capital, Almaty, informed Al Jazeera on situation of anonymity.
“There are many Russians who opened places of work and run their cash” through Kazakhstan to bypass the sanctions, he mentioned.
A Kazakh analyst claimed that the spectacle had been labored out throughout Tokayev’s go to to Moscow in early February.
“The duty was to indicate Tokayev as an unbiased and daring politician, a diplomat, who bravely retorts to questions and, on the similar time, makes unbiased political steps,” Dimash Alzhanov informed Radio Azattyk.
A Russian observer, nevertheless, sees no indicators of foul play in Tokayev’s phrases in St Petersburg.
“I believe it is a clear assertion of Kazakhstan’s place, hardly a deal, what’s the sense in such a deal?” mentioned Pavel Luzin, a Russia-based analyst with the Jamestown Basis, a think-tank in Washington, DC.
“That is hardly a demarche – moderately, a public reply to personal efforts of the so-called Russian diplomacy,” he informed Al Jazeera.
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