© APKyrgyzstan's peacekeepers are set to fly to Kazakhstan on Friday, Jan. 7, 2022.
Constitutional order was "mainly restored" in Kazakhstan on Friday, according to president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. However, the unrest is seemingly far from over, with
almost 4,000 people detained and dozens killed.
Mass protests began on January 2, prompted by public discontent with a sharp increase in prices for liquefied petroleum gas. The tensions quickly spread, turning violent in some places, including the largest city, former capital Almaty.
Security forces back 'in control'President Tokayev claimed on Friday morning that the country's security forces had managed to
largely restore constitutional order in all the regions with local authorities now back on top of the situation.
The state of emergency will now therefore be gradually lifted, the president said.
Use of lethal force authorizedThe use of lethal force was also authorized by Tokayev, who announced the launch of an anti-terrorist operation and dismissed the notion of negotiating with "bandits and terrorists" as "nonsense". Law enforcement and the military are
now allowed to "shoot to kill without warning."
Dozens injured & killed, thousands detainedAlmost 4,000 people have been taken into custody around the country since the beginning of the unrest, while 26 have been killed, according to statistics from Kazakhstan's Interior Ministry.
The real figures may be higher. Almaty has remained a hotspot of violence, with reports of explosions and damaged police vehicles. However, by Friday evening, shooting in the city center had become less intensive, according to Moscow's TASS news agency. In the western city of Aktobe, seven Kazakh police officers were injured, while in Shymkent, according to media reports, over 60 people, including military and police officers, were hurt.
Baikonur terror threat level raisedThe level of terror threat in the city of Baikonur, where the famous Cosmodrome is located, was raised to 'blue' on Friday in connection with the national unrest, the local administration said. Officials underlined the move was purely a precautionary measure and the situation there remains "stable and controlled." The 'blue' level will remain in effect until January 19. A curfew was also introduced to cover the same period.
Russia holds talks with CSTO alliesRussian President Vladimir Putin also held talks with member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Friday. Peacekeepers from Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan were deployed to Kazakhstan earlier this week, with Tokayev saying they would stay "for a limited period of time" to support the local security forces.
Russia's Ministry of Defense later clarified that the CSTO forces have also been tasked with the
protection of important facilities and key infrastructure and were not supposed to participate in "operational and combat" activities. The EU has also offered the bloc's assistance to help resolve the crisis with several countries calling on both the protesters and government forces to refrain from violence.
Comment: Tokayev offered the following
narrative for recent events:
Tokayev presented a timeline of the crisis, taking to Twitter with a large English-language thread late on Friday. Tokayev said he promptly addressed the initial demand of protesters, who were angered by a sharp hike in liquefied petroleum gas prices. He instructed the government "to regulate the price" on January 2 - effectively as soon as the protests took off.
"Regretfully, the protests in several regions of Kazakhstan and Almaty led to escalation of violence. Therefore, I decided to fire the government and imposed a nationwide curfew," he added.
This move also failed to stop the unrest, as "the protests led to further escalation of violence all over the country," Tokayev admitted. The president reiterated his earlier claims that the chaos was a result of "an armed act of aggression, well prepared and coordinated by perpetrators and terrorist groups trained outside the country."
Tokayev claimed that as many as 20,000 "gangsters and terrorists" were involved in the violence, with the country's largest city of Almaty enduring "at least six waves of attacks of terrorists." The rioters were "very well trained, organized and commanded by the special center," the president alleged, claiming that some of them were apparently foreigners "speaking non-Kazakh languages."
Tokayev reiterated his resolve to "neutralize" the "terrorists and gangsters" behind the unrest. Earlier in the day, he said no dialogue was possible with those who refuse to lay down arms, authorizing law enforcement to open fire on rioters without warning.
"They were beating and killing policemen and young soldiers, [setting] fire [to] administrative buildings, looting private premises and shops, secular citizens, raping young women," he claimed. "In my basic view: No talks with the terrorists, we must kill them."
For Kazakh security chief Karim Masimov, a close ally of ex-leader Nazarbayev, was
arrested this week on suspicion of "high treason."
The KNB had launched a pre-trial investigation on January 6, it said in a statement, adding that its former chairman, Masimov, and others had been arrested and placed in pre-trial detention on the same day. The agency provided no further details on the case, citing the ongoing investigation.
A veteran politician, Masimov, had served as the head of the KNB from 2016 almost until his detention. He was sacked by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on January 5, amid an outbreak of violence in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, where rioters stormed and ransacked government buildings and set them on fire.
Amid rumors that Nazarbayev
fled the country during the riots, his spokesman claims he is still in the capital. He has reportedly been holding "consultations" with Tokayev.
An RT was embedded with the Russian troops deployed to Kazakhstan as part of the CSTO mission:
In Almaty, RT freelance reporter Stanislav Obishchenko was
detained by Kazakh military while trying to report on the ongoing protests.
For a broad analysis of the situation, including its background and geopolitics, see this
Twitter thread by Clint Ehrlich.
The massive transfer of militants to Kazakhstan, with the aim of participating in radical protests and the subsequent takeover of the republic, was carried out from the territory of neighboring states - from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This results not only from the data that were established by the experts on the basis of an analysis of the situation, but also from the confessions obtained during the interrogation of the radicals and militants detained.
One of the detainees in Alma-Ata said he had flown in from Kyrgyzstan. According to him, some people offered him to participate in the demonstration for $ 200. At the same time, they paid for the flight to Kazakhstan. According to the detainee, people from neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were with him: [Link]
Earlier it was reported that not only the West but Turkey may be behind the funding of the protests in Kazakhstan. At the same time, one of the reasons could be the destabilization of the situation near the Russian borders, as has already been observed with Ukraine, Belarus and other countries bordering Russia or allies of Russia.