Kazakh leader says ‘coup’ defeated
Vows Russian troops will go home ‘soon’
Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said yesterday that his country had defeated an attempted coup d’etat during historic violence last week, and insisted that Russian-led troops called in to help quell the unrest would go home “soon”.
During a video-conference of leaders from several ex-Soviet countries in a military alliance that sent in the troops, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin confirmed they would leave as soon as their mission ended.
The Central Asian country has been left reeling in the wake of the worst violence in its recent history, but life in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty appeared to be returning to normal yesterday, with internet coverage restored as the nation observed a day of mourning for dozens killed in the clashes.
Mr Tokayev told the video-conference that “armed militants” had used the backdrop of protests to try to seize power.
“The main goal was obvious: the undermining of the constitutional order, the destruction of government institutions and the seizure of power. It was an attempted coup d’etat,” Mr Tokayev said.
The Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) has deployed just over 2,000 troops and 250 pieces of military hardware, the Kazakh leader said, vowing that the detachment would leave the country “soon”.
Some have voiced concerns that Moscow could leverage the mission to shore up its influence in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning last week that “once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave”.
“A contingent of CSTO peacekeeping forces has been sent to Kazakhstan — and I want to emphasise this — for a limited time period,” Mr Putin said during the meeting.
He said Kazakhstan was facing a threat from “international terrorism” and that measures taken by the CSTO showed that its members would not allow “so-called colour revolutions” to break out in the region.
Authoritarian Kazakhstan has accused “armed bandits” and terrorists of being behind the unrest, which began with protests over a fuel price hike.
The government said yesterday that foreign media reports had created “the false impression that the Kazakhstan government has been targeting peaceful protesters”.
“Our security forces have been engaging with violent mobs who were committing brazen acts of terror,” the foreign ministry said in the statement.
Mr Tokayev said in the meeting that his country’s security personnel “have never fired and will never fire on peaceful demonstrators”.
Kazakhstan’s government has struggled to firm up its narrative of the unrest. On Sunday, the information ministry retracted a statement that said more than 164 people had died in the unrest, blaming the publication on a “technical mistake”.
Officials previously said 26 “armed criminals” had been killed and that 16 security officers had died.
In total, nearly 8,000 people have been detained for questioning, the interior ministry said yesterday.
Nur-Sultan, the former capital, saw comparatively little unrest.