Russia on the offensive

The events in Kazakhstan mark the beginning of a new stage both in the domestic politics of the rich Central Asian country and in the post-Soviet space. The new realities arise regardless of the existing unknowns about the responsibilities in the revolts that have shaken Kazakhstan (according to the official version, an "attempted coup" by "extremists" and "terrorists", coordinated from abroad and nurtured from the interior of the country due to the incompetence and corruption of Kazakh entities). So far, the president of Kazakhstan, Kasim-Yomart Tokáyev, has not identified the leaders, entities or countries allegedly instigating the aggression that he attributes to "international terrorism."

In the interior of the country, Tokáyev accuses the security organs of passivity, desertion and treason in the face of the riots and, consequently, has dismissed and imprisoned Karim Masimov, head of the National Security Committee. That entity, in turn, was supervised by the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Tokayev's speech to Parliament on January 11 set out his intention to take advantage of the riots to reform the system founded by his predecessor, to which he remains familiarly linked. The president called for proposals to radically reform the conglomerate of state companies Samruk Kazyna, responsible for the bulk of GDP, and condemned the "oligopoly" and the untouchable caste of privileged people in a system of abysmal inequalities and closed distributions of wealth. Without naming them but clearly, he alluded to Dinara,daughter of Nazarbayev, and her husband Timur Kulibayev.

In the international arena, for the first time the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), made up of Russia and five countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus), sent troops to meet the demand for help from one of its members by virtue of the treaty that obliges them to provide assistance in case of aggression against the security, stability, integrity and sovereignty of the requesting country. The CSTO's brief operation in Kazakhstan allows Moscow to showcase a military and police intervention mechanism at a very sensitive time in Central Asia. The withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan has heightened the feeling of vulnerability of the repressive and kleptomaniac regimes in the area in the face of a potentially destabilizing gap in their borders.Russia reaches out to leaders and citizens of the applicant countries in exchange for a price, yet to be defined, in terms of loyalties and priorities.

Putin often uses the expression “color revolutions” to equalize the supposed threats in the Asian scenarios of the CSTO (terrorism with radical Islamist traits and organized crime) and in the European ones (NATO expansionism).

For Russia, what counts is playing a leading security role in both dimensions of the post-Soviet environment and, in a way, resurrecting the historic role that the Soviet Union played in the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War.

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