The unrest in Kazakhstan, which shook the entire post-Soviet space at the beginning of the year, is coming to an end. With the help of external forces of the CSTO, the country's leadership managed to retain power, but the echoes of what happened will be heard for a long time.
Was there a single organizer of the Kazakh protests, what were the causes and consequences of the uprising, and how will everything that happened affect the relations of the republic with other countries, including Ukraine - opposition politician, former leader of the unregistered and banned party "Alga" Vladimir told the ElitExpert agency Kozlov, who currently lives in Kyiv.
The increase in the price of liquefied gas by the government is considered a formal reason for the beginning of protests, are there real reasons for this?
In fact, for Western Kazakhstan, this is not quite a formal occasion, because this is the territory of the country, where there is a gas processing plant, where more than 90% of cars run on liquefied gas, and with their help people survive - toll, transport cargo, and so on. An increase in the price of gas will lead to an increase in the cost of their goods and services. People realized that together with the increase in the price of gas, the prices of absolutely everything will increase. This became the real reason for the protest, which later spread throughout the country. The protest did not appear yesterday. People have been protesting for a long time, but there are fewer and fewer opportunities for this. First, the legal possibility to form and register political parties, if they are incompetent, was destroyed. Recently, the police have switched to preventive tactics, that is, they already know civil activists by name and detain them, even if they just intend to go to a rally. They are blocked at home, administrative arrests are invented, so the ground for the expression of popular discontent was prepared a long time ago, but such a mass protest took place in independent Kazakhstan for the first time.
Why was it not possible to extinguish the uprising from the very beginning?
Because the government was absolutely not ready for the fact that, for example, 15 thousand people would come to the square in Aktau alone. They deal very badly when 50 or 100 people rally. Then special forces of the KNB (Committee of National Security) jump out, wave batons, grab their hands by their legs and take them away. But it is very difficult to deal with 10-15 thousand, especially since protests quickly broke out in almost all regional centers. Firstly, the police force was clearly insufficient, and secondly, the local police were partially demoralized. So, for example, in places like Aktau or Zhanaozen, the local police are quite vulnerable. There, the traditional system is such that even a policeman can be severely punished if he raises his hand against one of his own. Therefore, the authorities had problems with resolving the conflict.
Who was at the head of all these protests?
There was no one leader. For example, what happened in Almaty - looting, pogroms, arsons, robberies - is not a popular protest. These are not people who traditionally participate in opposition rallies, but criminal groups that are most likely on the "payroll" of certain persons of the Committee of National Security, the so-called "titushki", as they say in Ukraine. These are people who participate in organized provocations in order to create a reason for the use of force. They also participated in Zhanaozen in 2011, and it also happened in Almaty. These are young, athletic and criminal guys who know exactly what they are doing and have nothing to do with the protests.
The government made concessions to the protesters and lowered the price of liquefied gas to 50 tenge per liter, why didn't this immediately calm the protesters?
This is precisely what calmed the protesters in Aktau and Zhanaozen. They entered the protest in an organized manner and stopped any provocations, no one came close to them, and they left the protest in an organized manner, he explained that their economic demands were satisfied.
They temporarily, apparently, abandoned the political demands put forward and demonstrated that they know how to behave in an organized manner, and they probably achieved their goal.
And in other regions, there were other demands on the authorities, not only the lowering of gas prices, because it is not so relevant there. Gas-powered cars are not so common there, and there were other requirements, and these requirements were not met, so people continued to protest in many other cities.
In your opinion, will what happened in Kazakhstan affect Ukraine?
Ukraine, most likely, with the help of this situation, will finally determine what the government of Kazakhstan represents. Prior to this, Kyiv refused even to requests to penetrate some objective situation about Kazakhstan and was satisfied with what the embassy gave. In Ukraine, there was such a picture: Kazakhstan is friends, a good president, a national leader and so on. This is exactly what Gordon talked about in the interview he took with the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Saakashvili also said that Nazarbayev is a national leader when he was in Ukraine.
But Kazakhstan is, first of all, a vassal of Russia, not a friend of Ukraine. People and power in our country are different things.
