The situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than media is letting on | Hacker News Reader

The situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than media is letting on

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42 pointsnickysielicki25 comments

The author of that thread moved to Russia years ago and has a habit of using Russian govt talking points https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/the-repo...

I think it's worthwhile to read the Russian govt talking points -- and FWIW, that's writ plain in the thread: it's a naked presentation of Russian interests and viewpoints. It's hard to understand why people are motivated to engage in conflict, without hearing both sides talk about it. Either or both sides might be delusional, dishonest or both, but it's more information than silence. To that end, I'd like to see similar treatment of Kazakh motives... but that seems harder to come by (thanks, in large part, to government censorship, as I understand it)

As opposed to what, American ones?

For an opposite viewpoint:

https://ironcurtain.substack.com/p/the-next-morning

The author moved from Russia to the US years ago because he wasn't welcome in Putin's Russia

I don’t know anything about this situation, but definitely felt the author lost some credibility when their last tweet in the series promoted their previous viral tweet about a totally different situation where “god worked through them”.

Anyone else feel that was unnecessarily self-promoting and just a weird switch?

actually looks like revolution was more of "revolution". taking advantage of civil protests current president managed to get rid of previous president, a bunch of his relatives who had high posts and a bunch of people in security apparatus who were loyal to previous one. there is a talk that violent protestors were like "titushki" during ukranian revolution: i.e. people that were operated by current president to achieve his goals.

Yes, the author of the tweet completely missed this aspect

I can't find the original article that was a great summary, but this one has most of the points

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/08/world/asia/kazakhstan-pro...

Thread readable version: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1479517789450911747.html

> In the year before the attempted revolution, the U.S. National Endowment for democracy spent more than $1M in the country.

> The money went to PR campaigns against the government and training anti-government protesters.

An extraordinary claim -- but no supporting evidence offered.

Russia seems to point at things like this to create a silly narrative that their actions are actually America’s fault. Lots of people lap that kind of thing up in the west then excuse Russia for their crap. It’s amazingly effective.

No. That funding is right on the NED website.

No. A measly $1 million of funding from an American NGO to prodemocracy initiatives in an authoritarian country racked by inflation and other longer running issues is NOT to blame for Putin deciding to invade. Putin makes his own decisions and the people of Kazakhstan have their own agency, they are not stupid puppets of America.

You can argue it's not the proximal cause (which would imply arguing that the only thing the US did was spend a million dollars), but you can't argue that the US was promoting revolution.

The citizens of Kazakhstan, just like the citzens of Syria have their own agency. That doesn't mean you can't get played. Unless you mean that Kazaks have agency but the Syrians and Libyans didn't?

The best we can conclude here is that we don't know if this is or isn't in some way influenced by the US and some other foreign groups inherently. You can't say that the US definitely isn't angling for something here. That's the issue with meddling in other countries politics, people can reasonably suspect you're at fault when things happen.

But a troll farm operation counts as electoral interference?

It's on NED'S own site what they have been doing : https://www.ned.org/region/eurasia/kazakhstan-2020/

How is this an extraordinary claim? Are we just acting as if US financing of revolutions is extraordinary?

Of course there should be evidence (which is readily available), but this is so far from extraordinary it's not even funny.

Who cares what Russia thinks, their economy is in shambles, they can not bully Ukraine and they certainly can not bully Kazakhstan. Author writes as if Russia is at par of west powers, which is not even near the truth. They are dying society.

A sick, old, hungry bear is a dangerous bear just watch how the documentary about the Grizzly Man ended.

They are weak but Kazakhstan is much weaker.

what do you mean they cant bully ukraine?

they are literally doing that as we speak, while their "peacekeepers" are rolling around Kazakhstan prepping up a corrupt dictatoriship

Russian leadership will always find resources to gamble on geopolitics, even if that means tanking their economy ,like they did with Crimea

It's one interpretation of events. Another is that Putin has known all along he would need to act in Kazakhstan and staged the Ukrainian 'crisis' so that NATO politicians could go back to their constituents with a face-saving win in the 'standoff' while giving Putin free reign in Kazakhstan. We'll see how things play out...

Why did Putin need to act in Kazakhstan? Honest question, I really don't know of any background prior to the recent events.

Kazhakstan has: uranium, Baikonur cosmodrome, anti ballistic missile test site, and 25% ethnic Russians. Russia wants to have access to the resources and facilities and protect the ethnic Russians.

I bet when WW3 will start the US will nope the f out from NATO and leave Europe on its own against Russia and/or China

I think that depends very much on what the stated goals and likely outcomes are. In some theoretical future where a Russia-China alliance sweeps through eastern and central Europe I don't see any way the US would sit on the sidelines watching. But Crimea certainly shows there is some level of overt Russian aggression the US is willing to watch and do nothing about.

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