Kazakhs bemoan ‘stolen revolution’ after Putin pulls the strings to snuff out dissent
How humble protest over fuel prices sparked power struggle stirred up by the Kremlin that left at least 225 people dead
In an airless office on the first floor of a crumbling block that overlooks the main bazaar in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, six women passed around and rocked a baby.
When they described how their husbands and sons had gone missing at protests two weeks earlier, they wept.
“He is an ordinary person, just a peaceful protester,” one of the women, heavily pregnant, said. “He is not a terrorist.”
Thousands of people have been detained in Kazakhstan since protests at the start of the year were stamped out by a crackdown, supported by Vladimir Putin, that killed hundreds of people and snuffed out hopes of a “Kazakh Spring”. But they are not simply victims of another popular uprising in the former Soviet Union; they died as the collateral damage of a struggle for power between murky elites, smudged with the fingerprints of the Kremlin.
The story of how at least 225 people were left dead and many more in jail begins some 2,000 miles away on the western fringe of the Great Steppe. It can be told in full after The Daily Telegraph travelled across the country after an internet shutdown left the outside world blindfolded.
In the Soviet-built oil town of Zhanaozen, a thorn in the side of the authorities, peaceful protests over a sharp increase in fuel prices wrongfooted Kazakhstan’s elite on Jan 2. These protests spread fast, setting off hopes of a people’s revolution.
In the city’s large concrete central square, 36-year-old Nurlan pulled down his woolly hat against the cold wind. “Yes, we were the first to protest. The mayor’s office is scared of us,” he said with a hint of pride.
The other half a dozen or so people that The Telegraph interviewed in Zhanaozen expressed a careworn indifference to the unrest. Theirs was an accidental trigger for an ultimately failed popular revolution.
For people living in Zhanaozen and the surrounding region – with its nodding donkeys, semi-wild horses and double-humped camels – the charms of central Almaty, with its middle-class focus on fashion, fine food and democracy, feel a galaxy away. People here may also despise the Kazakh elite, who are accused of corruption. Despite being at the centre of Kazakhstan’s wealth production, locals feel cheated.
“It’s our gas. We pump it out of the ground,” said Zhannagul, who was leaving an office in Zhanaozen for her lunch break. “Why does it cost so much money?” On the first day of 2022, residents of Zhanaozen woke up to find that a litre of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, which is used by people to fuel their cars, had doubled in price.
Within 24 hours they had organised a protest of several hundred people which several witnesses said was peaceful. Posting about the protests on social media can mean prison. Photos have circulated online of men being released from police custody covered in bruises.
People who did agree to talk declined to be named. “It’s easy to be brave in a crowd of 10,000,” a lawyer in Aktau on the Caspian Sea, said. “But at home you are waiting alone for a knock at the door.”
Resentment against corruption and stagnant living standards had been building and protests triggered a euphoric rush to rebel. In the south, protesters pulled down a statue of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former president and self-styled Father of the Nation. The unrest also triggered a battle for control between President Kassym-jomart Tokayev and Mr Nazarbayev, who had retained power in the background.
Mr Tokayev moved decisively, sacking Mr Nazarbayev as chairman of the National Security Council, and fired his allies from key positions.
He also ordered the military into Almaty and asked for back-up from the Kremlin.
Soldiers from Russia and its former Soviet allies guarded “strategic installations”, freeing up Kazakh soldiers to move into Almaty. Of the 2,500 soldiers, around 2,000 were Russian.
The Telegraph has seen a video filmed on Republic Square of unseen people opening fire with automatic rifles, sending protesters running for cover.
Even though soldiers still guard Almaty’s street corners, burnt government buildings stand empty and boarded-up windows highlight the shops that looters targeted, life for most people is regaining its old rhythm.
For the thousands who bravely took to the streets, the protests have been a disappointment. Sipping tea in an Almaty cafe, one part-time activist said she wished they had never happened.
“All those lives lost,” she said. “People are being beaten right now. What was the point? The revolution was stolen from us.”