Kazakhstan crisis: Russia prepares troop withdrawal
Created: 01/13/2022, 08:42 AM
Russian soldiers shortly before their withdrawal in the Kazakh city of Almaty.
© Vladimir Tretyakov / NUR.KZ / AP / dpa
For around a week, foreign soldiers under Russian leadership have been deployed against the unrest and demonstrations in Kazakhstan.
Now they are evidently leaving again.
Almaty / Moscow - One week after the transfer of foreign troops to the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, which was shaken by bloody unrest, the end of the military operation began on Thursday.
According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, the Russian-dominated Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) returned "socially important objects" to the Kazakh authorities.
At the request of the authoritarian leadership of the Central Asian country, the peacekeeping forces, so called by the CSTO, had in the past few days helped to restore the constitutional order in the metropolis of Almaty and other regions.
Kazakh President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev described the first operation of this kind as a success and thanked his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin for his rapid intervention.
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The relocation of soldiers from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan will take ten days. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, it is being carried out in close coordination with the Kazakh side. Preparations were also underway for the military technology and other special equipment to be moved back to their locations, it said. According to the information, Russia had flown out more than 2,000 civilians in the past few days, including not only its own citizens but also foreigners.
In the oil and gas-rich ex-Soviet republic on the border with China, which has been praised internationally for its stability for many years, there were initially protests against doubling the price of gas, which is used as fuel for cars, at the beginning of the month.
The demonstrations turned into brute force after a few days.
Head of state Tokayev spoke of an attack by "terrorist gangs".
He had given an order to shoot.
There were more than 100 dead, more than 10,000 arrests and hundreds injured.
According to the leadership of the ninth largest country in the world, the situation is stabilizing.
dpa
