Russia sends troops to Kazakhstan to put down deadly uprising
reuters.com
reuters.com
Almaty was surprisingly cosmopolitan, walkable, felt eminently livable.
Took the train to Baikonur. Walked on the launch pad, visited the old control rooms. [0]
The whole way: Kindness and gentleness were the two words that kept bouncing around my head. In the middle of nowhere folks were driving sensibly (as opposed to, say, in Morocco where I felt like every car ride was a dice roll). I saw two cars have an accident in Almaty — the drivers calmly stepped out, shook hands, and discussed the situation.
Nur-Sultan was, however, miserable — built for cars, human antagonistic, artificial layout, depressing architecture.
I'd love to get back to Almaty.
Hoping for swift and peaceful resolution on all this.
Typographically I found it interesting that the country was attempting to shift away from Cyrillic to a more romanized (??) written form; i.e., "Qazaqstan."
https://www.youtube.com/c/baldandbankrupt/featured
Doesn't look like he's been to Kazakhstan yet though...
I can't help but feel modern Western society has lost and forgotten something within. It's hard to describe but easier described as nearest to changes in warmth and compassion.
It's only getting worse and these old places it seems ingrained.
https://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-natu...
The presence of peace, or the absence of war is indeed a big plus, but doesn't mean automatic happiness for everyone.
Baikonur the city, not the cosmodrome, was an entirely different experience. Baikonur is essentially a Russian military outpost that continues to exist as a place for the personnel and families of Roscosmos and the various entities that exist to operate the cosmodrome, which is several kilometers away. You must pass through a military checkpoint to enter the city and military police patrol the city. Don't stay up late drinking in the central square! You will be helpfully escorted away by the militia.
If you talk to the local non-Russians living in Baikonur, they are not huge fans of the Russian presence. You can observe the youths swearing and yelling at the buses of Roscosmos personnel and tourists returning from launches. They would be glad to see the Russians leave, even though it would be a massive blow to the economy.
One of the first things the native Kazakhs did after the collapse of the Soviet Union was build a mosque right outside of the entrance of the city of Baikonur. It is quite nice and I visited it with no problem. Those who wish to attend mosque that live within city must pass through a checkpoint to leave the city and another to get in. There is no mosque allowed within the city, although there is a Russian Orthodox church, which I also visited with no problem.
The cosmodrome itself is an amazing place worthy of a huge essay, so I will save my observations for a topic relevant to that.
I am hopeful the Kazakh people can find a future free from Russian influence and the Russian-backed strongmen that have controlled the country in post-Soviet times. Other than Russian colonial outposts like Baikonur, the culture and religion of the people there are quite different that those of Russia.
There are still at least a million of ethnic Russians living in the Northern and North-Eastern Kazakhstan who settled there starting from 18th century. What do you propose them to do?
when an American (or other rich Westerner) shows up in remote area, they are treated like a king,
basically you are treated as people treat ridiculously good looking and popular people around them that they want to be around,
that generosity you feel is nothing more than being popular and center of attention
start living there, all of a sudden that generosity is not so obvious, families are at each other's throats for that bushel of corn one guys grandfather stole from the other fifty years ago, random shit gets stolen, the whole garden is trampled because someone is stealing a few of your tomatoes, trash is thrown over your yard because the neighbor wants to "save" on trash collection fees, people cut ahead of you around in the queues, people have untrained dangerous dogs that are a menace to the whole community ...
etc
So basically all the same petty BS that you get in the urbanized inner suburbs HN raves about without the bickering being laundered through lawyers and local officials to give it a veneer of acceptability?
Humans gonna human.
If this is supposed to be the description of Kazakhstan, I haven't seen a post with more bullshit in my life. Like "bushel of corn ... fifty years ago", "the garden is trampled", "save on trash collection fees", "people cut ahead of you in the queues" gee.
It is about the rich westerner's naive gushing when visiting African, Eastern European, Central American remote villages etc
"Everybody is so nice and generous around here ... not like back home in the civilized world"
They confuse how people treat them in particular with what it is like living there.
And after all, next time it might be you looking for a bite to eat and a place out of the wind and rain for the night. There's not a lot of Holiday Inns on the steppe or in ancient Greece.
How high is the risk, if you make an effort to behave well?
As if people felt the need to compensate for their hospitality and generosity elsewhere.
The other more concerning thing, is this clueless chipper tourist act he does constantly - many times, I've seen him interview desperate, bitter, destitute people who lived in derelict former industrial centers of the USSR, telling stories of how their towns were the centers of industry, culture, activity - only for the factories to shut down, the opportunities disappear, the buildings turn to slums, and the only escape that remained was drinking.
And he just grills them question after question - and grins like a five year old at his first time at the zoo. It made me think something is very wrong with that man.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz3hBuq-Huk
While it’s possible to differentiate these two things like you mentioned, if you look at honor as a concept, it’s useful function is about curbing higher cost of distrust. And that Sapolsky does explain in the linked video.
Aggressive armed bandits in police uniform tried to rob me several times. Kazakhstan is true mafia state where every part of the regime tries to enrich itself at the expanse of the people.
In contrast to the rich oil elite there are the normal people who often not even have tap water in the villages. And who live often in constant fear of being robbed by the armed forces.
But why is such a dysfunctional dictatorship so stable? Why did it last for three decades? The situation is very similar to Azerbaijan. I believe the answer is: it is backed by the West because a stable dictator in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan guarantees the oil flow.
And yet, it's Russia and it's strong-arm tactics that are desperately trying to keep Kazakhstan's regime in power.
Think about it: Russia is even sending it's paratroopers to Kazakhstan to stomp out unrest. Not the US. Not the EU. Not Switzerland. No, Russia.
How do you fit that into your mental model?
Do they still need Finland as a "buffer state" [1]?
Yes and no. Had the Winter war not happened, Finland wouldn't have joined the German attack.
If it's all just a "cold war mindset".
Complete waste of resources from US side! Russia is very successful at making people in ex-USSR countries hate it as-is, making western propaganda completely redundant! But I know a lot of people who actively participated in Maidan revolution and are still waiting for their dirty CIA $$$. Hopefully Obama will pay his debts some day...
I participated in both (2004 and 2014). Where do I register for the "dirty CIA $$$"? I somehow missed it during the original briefing.
And this is exactly what we are seeing in Kazakhstan: people riot over increasing cost of living and the president blames it on foreign agitators. Because that is easier and more convenient than actually engaging with the issue.
Not always.
See for example "US Army Field Manual FM 31-20-3, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces". This one is outdated and was based on US operations in Central/South America.
I'm sure Russians have something similar.
If Russia is so influential over Kazakhstan, why all natural resources and power plants in Kazakhstan belong to Western companies?
Why Nazarbaev had replaced Cyrillic alphabet with Latin? It was clearly a jab at Russia.
Kazakhstan was/is clearly under heavy western influence.
> Think about it: Russia is even sending it's paratroopers to Kazakhstan to stomp out unrest. Not the US. Not the EU. Not Switzerland. No, Russia.
What will US do if in case of civil unrest in Mexico, Russia will send troops to Mexico?
This is false. Kazakhstan retains most oil revenues and its joint ventures with foreign companies for oil exploration and drilling include not just Western, but also for example Chinese companies.
>Why Nazarbaev had replaced Cyrillic alphabet with Latin?
Because he saw clearly how Putin is weaponizing language and identity rhetoric to justify wars of aggression and Anschluss-style annexations against its neighbours. The script you use is rather symbolic, but those symbols do matter. Otherwise, Russia itself wouldn't have stamped out the Latin script and forced those minority languages, already few in number, to use Cyrillic in the 2000s.
This makes no sense, no one is alleging Mexico is under Russia’s thumb so this makes no sense. Replace Mexico with Cuba circa 1970 and it would be relevant. And also yes, if Cuba in 1970, I would not be surprised if Russia sent in troops if Castro asked.
This makes no sense, because no strong independent sovereign country (there're very few of them in the world, about 5-6) will allow foreign troops to land in the neighboring country.
If Russia would send troops under any pretext in any situation to Mexico, USA would start a World War III.
What languages are you talking about?
Please don't try to change the subject. Putin sent Russia's paratroopers to Kazakhstan to use them against Kazakhstan's civilian population to quelsh unrest. It's not the US, Switzerland, Finland, the EU, nothing. This is Russia intervening in Kazakhstan to preserve Russia's interests, and no amount of whataboutism changes this.
Also I'm not changing the subject because we have a whole branching forum here, not a single coversation that can talk only about one thing at a time.
If you are not interested in that branch of the discussion simply skip it.
Just to be clear you are blaming “the west” (US, UK, Sweden, France, Canada, Switzerland, etc.) for Russian intervention in Kazakhstan because those countries buy Russian products? (Leaving aside all the other countries in the world which do the same but w/e).
Contrast Kazakhstan with Ukraine. The U.S. would not sit silently by if Russia were to send troops into the Ukraine again.
I'm not blaming anybody for anything. It's just business.
What these countries has to do in Kazakhstan? Russia and Kazakhstan has a treaty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Org...
Also, significant percent of population of Kazakhstan is Russian.
So what? They are citizens of Kazakhstan. Russia does not have some sort of "claim" over every person in the world who is of Russian descent.
Maybe things are not as simple as Fox News makes them.
HN is generally bad at understanding that people will willingly forgo some wealth in exchange for political/ideological/religious goals when the forgoing takes any form other than paying more taxes to fund something you approve of.
They get it when your example is something they all support like the US fighting a civil war over slavery but when you try to generalize that behavior up a step and then use it to explain the actions of people supporting something they don't agree with you get something like this[1].
Ceaușescu went from addressing a mass crowd in the square to execution in five days after ruling for about 25 years. Dictatorships are like steam boilers: so long as the pressure is contained, everything looks fine, until suddenly it isn't.
(Interestingly having looked him up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu he's one of the few leaders to have achieved what is now denounced as "neoliberal", the paying down of the country's national debt. It only took starving the country to do it.)
Neoliberalism also has nothing to do with debt. It attempts to increase profit rates through privatisation, deregulation and austerity measures. Only the latter happened in România in the 80 and it was imposed by the IMF. Suspiciously, the loan had just been paid off in 89 when the coup happened.
My bet is natural resources.If i remember correctly Kazakhstan is the biggest uranium producer in the world. With big natural resources, you don't need a solid economy supported by a state of law to keep the regime running. Something similar can be said for Azerbaijan.
The trick is to keep regular people calm by letting them have enough of the cake so that they don't revolt, but sometimes the money flow reduces, or the ruling elite becomes too greedy, and the problems starts. That's what may be happening here.
Edit: Apparently most cars use LPG there as well.
- take away (arrest, freeze, whatever) the elite's real estate in the west
- same thing with other assets, banc accounts etc
- ban them from living in the west or going to the west on vacation, for medical treatment.
- ban their families from living in the west, their kids from studying there.
this is not my idea, you will find similar suggestions a hundred times in different forms on the Russian-speaking internet.
maybe there is no legal base right now to do it as described, but the alternative is broad sanctions that hit the small people harder then regime collaborators.
edit: formatting
US, EU and UK profit from oppressive regimes and don't have any interest of actually hurting them. And why should they? They have their own people to think of.
This characterization is simply naive.
True, it's not like the western powers are shouting their support from the rooftops. But they are more than happy to play ball with these regimes (including high-level military cooperation and lucrative trade agreements) as long as it it doesn't get, you know, "too" embarrassing for them to do so.
I haven’t heard of anyone from e.g. BP getting punished for this, though I believe the British government asked it to investigate itself a few times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijani_laundromat
https://www.dw.com/en/how-german-politicians-have-aided-the-...
(I will note that most western oil comes from the middle east with Europe also getting a decent amount from Russia.)
In the Cold War, dealing with Soviets was unthinkable. Now, the West is complacent, there is even a term for it, Schröderizatsiya. See this opinion piece by the former Estonian president [1].
[1] https://news.err.ee/1608362130/toomas-hendrik-ilves-alexei-n...
What about China, should they be sanctioned too?
[Many make the claim that sanctions mostly affect civilians so for example are against Iran Sanctions, etc.]
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/new-icij-i...
https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-international-anti-money-lau...
Enforcement of course is a perpetual cat-and-mouse game in which the cats are underfunded and the mice have money to burn.
Although really the question of banking money from unacceptable foreigners is an old one, unresolved throughout the 20th century. It's too convenient for the West to really give up on, so a short list is maintained of the "definitely unacceptable", but there's no systematic criteria for what "unacceptable" really is.
It's quite clear from the lack of UK response to the Salisbury poisonings that the UK is financially compromised into indifference, for example.
Besides sanctions, we should also seek to undermine and delegitimize those governments by supporting dissident movements and other covert actions.
So does the Russian elite as you say, even Putin himself. The US's currency is the reserve currency of the world and the currency most commerce is done in so western banks are used. They also are much more stable than banks in their own countries where other elites could steal their money. This doesn't mean that the US or the west is somehow controlling their countries.
The goal with these sorts of comments is to try and get liberal democracies to stop engaging in the rest of the world. If you keep getting told it’s your fault eventually you say “fine I’m done” and then that’s when they win.
They don't have to, benefiting just the right people is enough. Schröder & friends say hi.
Same was happening in Russia in 90s: western corporation took control of all Russia's natural resources using phony agreements and corrupt businessmen (like Mikhail Khodorkovsky). E.g. in 90s people in Russia were dying of hunger, but oil was sold to the West by the price of water.
When Putin came to power, first thing he had done is returning control over natural resources. That's exactly the moment when all the West started vilifying him so badly.
I don't understand what point you tried to make. Do you believe someone needs deep state contacts and government approval to purchase private property in a European country?
Not only SA sells oil to US, but it also invests earned money into US government bonds. It's allows them to do whatever they want in their country, no matter how "undemocratic" it is. And the "free" press being oh-so-independent and honest, happily ignores that too, instead always pointing you to more convenient targets.
Nazarbayev gave up over 1000 nuclear weapons to be disarmed when he came to power. This came with some explicit and implicit guarantees to not be color-revolutioned by the West.
Now..The Russian army is sent to quell deadly unrest. If the Kazakhstan army joins protesters, it could end up with a full-scale war between Russian "invaders" and "patriots" driven by the same nationalism.
PS. 2022 is gonna be fun(not).
It’s as “foreign” as any NATO country’s army to another.
I don't believe your comparison is even remotely adequate.
Could you point out an example of a NATO member requesting a military intervention from another NATO member in their own country to respond to protests?
Because what we're seeing here is a blatant attempt by Russia to preserve Kazakhstan's regime by having foreign armed forces intervene against the nation's civilian population.
I doubt OP is _condoning_ the CSTO troops (who are more than just russia) coming to the president's aid.
CSTO is not the same as NATO, but it is similar. There is a strategic alliance between Russia and the government of Kazakhstan. It is more than logical for the president to pull in troops to counteract their own troop's defection.
Its not morally correct, but entirely logical, which I think OP was trying to say.
The US militarily intervened in Europe 75 years ago and has bases in Germany, Italy etc. No need to have military come in for the first time since it is still there.
Italy had NATO violently suppressing protests in Italy for years with Gladio.
Wouldn't this be more like Taiwan asking China to send in the army to help with a protest?
Or Iraq asking Iran?
Using the military against one's own people is already a "nope", getting foreign assistance sounds exactly like a foreign invasion.
I think he meant the US
Also, did the US tell the regime in Kazakhstan to raise oil prices? That was, obviously, not the people’s only grievance, but it was the spark that lead to the protests and rebellion.
The “US meddling” excuse is a tired cliche, and insulting to the people who put their lives on the line to fight oppressive, corrupt regimes.
I don't know if they did, but it wouldn't exactly be out of character for the US to encourage a country to do market liberalization reforms.
Isn't the US lobiying another word for corruption?
As for corruption in the US, I acknowledge it, but it’s laughable to compare it to what happens in countries run by Putin and Pals. In Russia, Kazakhstan, Syria, etc. the people’s only choice is rebellion. In the US, we (still) have the ballot box.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/politics/us-ukraine-security-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-to...
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/18/788874844/how-u-s-military-ai...
...and I won't get into the donations from Ukraine to the Clinton Foundation at the same time.
On the other hand it seems that the economy of Kazakhstan was one of the best among other stans. It is possible that prolonged covid restrictions also played the role.
(this is what every russian bot is saying)
TL;DR: do not bring a flashlight or guitar to a gun fight. Drinks (cocktails in particular) on the other hand...
In Almaty, the protests got violent with killings and mass looting. A few other cities saw looting and destruction of ex-president's statues, but most of Kazakhstan was peaceful, including the place where the original gas-price protests started. The violence part does not represent the sentiment of the majority, I would bet, it's something organized; I don't know by whom and for what reason.
Which source? The one that requested Russian intervention? Why there are lots of videos of protests, shootings, killings by the Kazakh army, and looting by unidentified people but only words of the interested party for this one?
I don't remember the "AC unit" but I do remember Russian media's "100% sure version of 2 Ukraine planes downing the Netherlands' jet" a few years ago (with interviews of "experts" all over the place). That was their position for a long time (maybe half a year, until they shamelessly changed it to "Ukraine BUKs did it"). The "beheading story" seems like a fairy tale from the same authors.
BTW, it has nothing to do with Kazakhstan's legitimate goverment, which is free to request military assistance from an organization (not just from Russia, if it matters).
https://globalcomment.com/is-russia-losing-or-tightening-its...
about US looking into getting an airbase and Tokayev trying to play it both sides. That probably won't happen anymore
We've now seen this in Armenia, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Kazakhstan.
I think the geopolitical message is pretty clear - EU/US will not protect you. Alliances with them cost little, but have little protective value. Russia/Iran/China/Turkey might force you to pay a higher price for their protection, but at the end of the day, they will actually protect you.
It's more important to have few close allies than appeasing everyone.
BTC and other crypto seem to gravitate toward less expensive energy sources, yet require a substantial capital investment. Is crypto an emerging method for dictators to expropriate wealth? Are there going to be “blood bits” similar to “blood diamonds” or other commodities tainted by their provenance?
Yes, same for local mafiosi/siloviki who can force the electricity company guy to look the other way (at gunpoint).
> Are there going to be “blood bits” similar to “blood diamonds”
Given the recirculation and tumbling, probably a majority of BTC/Ether went through shady people's hands (just like most $100 bills have coke residue on them...). Bitcoin advocates usually tout this as a feature not a bug.
If dictators/mafiosi contribute a significant amount to the overall hash rate, are they not decreasing transaction costs for whichever blockchain they use?
(The actual transaction cost to the user is driven by congestion and is set unilaterally by the user based on their tolerance for queueing, so it can be zero.)
I see now that their most recent figure has changed to 18.1%.
The electrical power figure was then calculated based on the total global power consumption published in the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
It looks like Kazakh total energy consumption is 861 Kwh [0] and total elecricity is 104 TWh. Is it realistic for 43% of a country's electricity to be going to Bitcoin? If that were true, what sort of infrastructure would be developed? Datacenters colocated with coal plants?
Over less than a year, Kazakh average monthly hashrate share went from 5% to 18%, increase of >260%. Given 2020 utilization of 104 Kwh with 12.5 Kwh going to Btc ((5/18)45=12.5), then current (no pun intended) utilization with 18% hashrate share would be 136 Kwh (104+45-((5/18)45)). Is it reasonable for a country to increase electric generating capacity by 30% to support bitcoin?
Oct'20: 4.77%
Nov'20: 5.35%
Dec'20: 6.17%
Jan'21: 6.71%
Feb'21: 7.65%
Mar'21: 8.19%
Apr'21: 7.37%
May'21: 8.80%
Jun'21: 13.79%
Jul'21: 18.10%
It also seems the increase in hashrate coincides with China banning Bitcoin mining? That likely puts a skew on the numbers, although I'm not immediately sure which way.
This data is from geolocation of the IP's of miners connecting to the servers of mining pools. Note the obvious flaws in the methodology:
1. IP geolocation data may not accurately represent the location of the mining hardware (e.g. VPNs could be used) 2. The participating mining pools may not be a representative sample of the total hashrate distribution.
So take the data with a grain of salt. Especially since China banned all crypto mining in the past year, going from a reported 35% share to nothing in an instant, it seems plausible some miners are operating underground using a VPN. Some people are saying that up to 20% of total capacity is actually still operating in China.
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a064b82a-4e4c-41ce-...
> Use of natural gas by households is dependent on the availability of natural gas network and price (Figure 5, Figure 6). Out of 21 000 surveyed households, 41% were using natural gas (for all purposes, including for heating, water heating and cooking purposes). The share of natural users by house type was as follows: 45% of urban apartments, 50% of urban detached houses, 31% of rural apartments and 31% of rural detached houses. Majority of the households in the western regions of Kazakhstan rely on natural gas due to the developed gas pipeline infrastructure and low gas prices.
Even though the price of LPG had doubled and that supposedly caused riots, even the new doubled price is way lower than price of LPG in Europe and other parts of the world.
Can't imagine Americans ever saying the US invaded South Vietnam when it's various puppet Saigon governments asked for fraternal assistance.
By that logic, next time there's a protest or riot in NYC the British should send in some Royal Marines.
Russia signed a treaty with Ukraine respecting Ukrainian sovereignty and borders in 1997. It broke that treaty - and international law - in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea.
You could argue Crimea should never have been ceded to Ukraine back when both nations were part of the USSR and you may well be right. But if we start allowing military invasions to correct an injustice because part of a country was made part of another country, we'd have eternal conflict. Ask the Serbians about Kosovo, the Irish about Ulster, the Germans about East Prussia, on and on.
My own government is giving me €400 this winter which is nice.
When a Dutch finance minister goes on TV to give everyone money you believe him because he has an unlimited creditcard. It's a "look under your seat" moment. Why did Kazakhstan make this decision in the first place? Because they are in dire financial straits.
Our government (UK) is not changing the existing single payment of £140 (means tested).
On top of that, the PM “misspoke” and told Parliament it was £140 a week…
Jokes aside, this is as if the NATO (especially the USA) would send troops to France against the yellow west protests. Or as if the NATO would be sending troops against the Catalonian separation movement. The NATO also didn't send troops to Turkey during the Turkish coup d'état attempt.
What the CSTO is doing here can only be compared with the Warsaw Pact sending troops to suppress the Prague Spring. It shows that the CSTO is basically the successor of the Warsaw pact.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/3/15/saudi-soldiers-sent...
This kind of nonsense comments appear whenever there are people with positive comments on China or Russia. I guess my top level comment on this thread will be one of the "Russia-patriot" ones. For the record, I am an Indian living in Malaysia - I simply choose to read proper sources and be informed of geopolitical events rather than parrot US propaganda. I learned to do so after reading a book by an American, often mentioned in HN (the book is Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman).
And yet in your other comment you linked to "Moon of Alabama", anonymous blogger which always takes a pro-Kremlin position. How is that a "proper source"?
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/11/kyle-rittenhouse-is-no...
What kind of a reply is that? You can search what he wrote on every topic which is sensitive for Kremlin (Crimea, Donbass, MH17, Navalny, Skripals, Syrian chemical attacks) and in every post he would take a "Russia did nothing wrong" position.
Another relatively neutral source on reporting on Central Asia is https://www.indianpunchline.com/about-me/ if you are interested.
HUNGARY 56, and Czechoslovakia 67, Ukraine 2014, Kazakhstan 22, it's the same playbook.
Treating anything by Noam Chomsky as a good thing to follow is pretty laughable though.
Also it appears your post was flagged and deleted.
Agree about the Russian media, they do a cheap imitation of Western narrative building journalism and are far more clumsy about telegraphing their agenda.
Manufacturing consent correct points out malicious sounding actions by the US, but it never delves into how literally major or minor power in history has done exactly the same. He loves to shut on the US, while turning a blind eye to every other authoritarian nation and having his life's work be funded by Darpa.
These are not Slavs and no they dont belong to Russia in any sense. You can look up the country demographics, the minorities are other former non-Slav soviet nations. Russia has no interest in the rights of the Kazak people, this is just their run up to reverting back to old fashioned imperialism.
The US uses the same play book, just dont get it twisted about Russia's intentions. In any case the whole world will watch and do nothing cause everyone has their own problems ?
If you read Noam Chomsky you will understand that propoganda is used by every country. But if you read enough history you know for damn sure there are no good intentions here, except people asking for their right to a decent way of life.
Even Russian speakers do not always want to associated themselves with Russia.
You cannot speak for all of us.
To those who aren't aware, Noam Chomsky vehemently denied Pol Pot's mass murder of millions in Cambodia.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia and the US began arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s and 1980s, which again the Times covered, although slightly obliquely. Chomsky condemned the US arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
So you have upper middle class Europeans, and some upper middle class Europeans living in their media bubble. Other views outside this bubble are heretical and suspicious.
Even YC founder Paul Graham touched on this lightly in his essay about how "submarine" PR articles about men's formal suits make it into the press. Noam Chomsky (who also writes books about the language of Turing machines) covers the corporate media more thoroughly. People who actually talk about what the US is doing like journalist (and former programmer of open source port scanners) Julian Assange are imprisoned.
Also, Kazakhstan has troops coming in from Belarus, Tajikistan, Armenia and Russia. So just mentioning Russia in the headline is already a slant.
I think Kremlin doesn't want Russians to have an idea that their detestable government can be overthrown. "Do you want it like in Ukraine" and "we need stability"/"lest there is no war in Russia" are the most common takes (and literal quotes) from their TV coverages of protests or any criticism of Putin & his friends.
Reading this, I will definitely reach out to him.
Economic events (including increase of gas prices) triggered local social unrest, which the government attempted to suppress and failed as it escalated and resulted in at least some breakdown of government power (some police refusing to suppress protesters and joining them, protesters seizing government buildings and setting them on fire, looting of weapons from police stations, etc). The local military seems largely not involved (but there are some cases) and apparently it's not expected to be fully loyal to the leadership if asked to suppress revolts.
After that ruler offered a back down on the changes and a rotation of the government, but the protesters apparently want a full change of leadership. This was not acceptable to the leadership, who invited neighbouring militaries to support them against the revolt, which can be used more freely/reliably than local army.
Understanding geopolitics is an exercise nuance. Kazakhstan has to deal with huge and strong foreign adversaries, and has no strong alliances, yet must protect distant cities which all border China, Russia, and central asian nations, with a large desert in the center. It is militarily indefensible and Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, and the US, all want Kazakhstan's resources and strategically located bases.
Contrary to your sentiment, Kazakhstan has been conducting de-Russianification with the deployment of language police to stop people from using Russian, and switching from the Cyrillic alphabet to the latin one.
Below is an excellent article describing all the different pressures on the country and how it tries to balance foreign influences.
https://globalcomment.com/is-russia-losing-or-tightening-its...
Interestingly, the most violent and organized protests are occurring in the South bordering China and Kyrgystan - a city which has people selling gov't subsidized cheap gas over the border in China on the black market for a 300% profit. That might be a big source for the organized violence. Curbing black market sales was the point of the change that sparked the unrest.
Regardless of the cause, it is likely Russia is going to capitalize on this turmoil and provide continuity for the current President, by extracting some allegiance.
This was actually revealed by the center-right government in Italy in 1990, because they were more scared of the US/NATO involvement in Italian domestic affairs, then their own left leaning working class.
The real terrorists are those who are using army against their own population. Neighboring Kyrgyzstan had multiple revolutions, too. And their army did the right thing every time by not getting involved (except the last one when Kremlin played its part).
You don't need all the "protesters" to be thugs. 1% is enough to make cities dangerous place for everyone, including other protesters.
You know nothing about the country or the people who live there or what exactly going on right now, but automatically side with one of the part of the conflict based on your feelings.
P.S. So funny, you complain you don't get the logic, and I get downvoted for explaining it, rather than calling names.
I suspect that the president has realised that the police and army are not entirely on his side, so is wanting to have some "loyal" troops to send round and kill the protestors, in a way that the domestic troops are less likely to.
> A puppet state is a state that is de jure independent but de facto completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its orders.
Even though Kazakh president does become dependent on Russian forces to some degree, I don't see how 3000 soldiers can control a country with an army of 100,000, National guard of 32,000 and 86,000 policemen. It may give an upper hand, but against whom? There's even no organized opposition.
If you make paragons Czechoslovakia uprisings in 1968, then USSR sent 500,000 soldiers and 5,000 tanks in a 10 times smaller country.
So it was 3 orders of magnitude larger intervention than this.
Using a military treaty in case of a popular unrest may be illegitimate, but it's nowhere near a puppet state.
I found the explanation of this article quite convincing.
The key takes is: Tokayev, the Kazakhstan's president, does not completely trust his own forces and is afraid they might be more loyal to the old president, or the elites might see him as weak and try to plot against him. Therefore, he asks Putin for his armed forces to assist in stabilizing the situation. This is good for both of them: Tokayev stabilizes his position and gets some time to fire or prosecute the officials he doesn't trust, and Putin gains more influence over Tokayev in the future — Tokayev becomes dependent on Putin's support.
Over the last two days, Tokayev has made some big changes in the government structure. For example, he fired the old president Nazarbayev from his current position of The Chairman of the Security Council (which he technically wasn't authorized to do). The old president hasn't made any public response to that, and is rumored to have escaped to Europe with his whole family (flightradar has shown a few private jets leaving the country as the riots got violent). Tokayev has also removed some of the Nazarbayev's people (people who served under Nazarbayev for a long time) from their positions yesterday; one big example is Massimov, the head of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee, the country's main intelligence service.
Watching the local news closely these last days, I'm getting convinced that someone is orchestrating the violence and shooting on the streets. There's a footage of people handing out firearms to the protestors (it looks more like hunting rifles and shotguns, so it must be the loot from the firearm stores; but some of them have combat AKs they captured from the police, one video shows them having an RPG grenade). And those armed people with no uniforms are too organized: they give actual armed fights to the police and army forces — not something you could expect from a spontaneously gathered crowd. The organization and determination are shocking: they move from one government building to another, seizing things, burning cars and buildings, focusing on important ones (firearm stores, police offices, city administration) in the situation where mobile broadband is off. Yesterday, the government has withdrawn its forces from the city (friends of my friends who are in the police say they were ordered not to wear uniforms) and evacuated the main buildings. Today they are entering back and fighting the bandits, they report that a few groups were already eliminated.
Having said this, obviously not everyone who's out on the streets now is one of those organized bandits. There are many people who genuinely came for a peaceful protest before it was hijacked into what it is now, and there's also people who are seizing the opportunity to loot and wreak havoc unpunished and drunk (what comes to mind is the video of a guy trying to set a traffic light on fire using a gas burner).
Disclaimer: I'm not in Kazakhstan right now, but I'm watching the situation closely through media and my friends there
EDIT: Removed the news of TV broadcast tower being stormed, it turned out to be fake
Attempts to overthrow governments in Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan are "protests." So are attacks on the residence of the President of Kazakhstan with rifles and grenades, and burning down the office of the mayor of Almaty.[1]
The same outlets described the mild violence by a congregation of Trump supporters near the Capitol last year as a "coup," "attack" and "riot."
[1] Russia-led alliance sending peacekeepers to Kazakhstan (https://apnews.com/article/business-kazakhstan-almaty-9da423...)
It's in every their article. It's a trashcan of the worst and dumbest pro-West propaganda, I don't know how any sane person would refer to it.
It's not a journalism, they don't even have journalists. They're producing anti-Russian fake news.
BTW, even that they do poorly, I know people that unsubscribed from Meduza because they're tired from it's paranoid rusophobic hatred.
What Kazakh politicians say is not very relevant here. The media outlets themselves are reporting that presidential residences and mayoral offices have been attacked and set on fire by "protesters."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This is all over TV news.
I get that it’s newsworthy, but it’s Reddit newsworthy not HN newsworthy. What am I missing?
Social media is just everyone pushing their own agenda and guessing without providing any evidence or meaningful analysis, and when it comes to HN - it's pretty much the same.
It's nothing but anti-Russian sentiment and conspiracy theories in this thread. Nothing of substance, because no one here is an expert in this field.