Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Kazakhstan returning to the Russian sphere of interest?

Remarks of Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi

At present, it’s quite difficult to clearly identify the motives behind the increasingly inflamed protests in Kazakhstan. While news reports talk about a spontaneous unrest caused by the sudden rise of energy prices, President Tokayev and the Kazakh government have issued official statements on a foreign terrorist intervention aimed at destabilizing the Central Asian country. In contrast, several foreign analysts write about a national uprising to overthrow and democratize the authoritarian regime built and strictly controlled by iron-fisted dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev for three decades. Although Nazarbayev, who had already established his political career during the Communist times as one of the top executive decision makers of the Soviet Union and then as the president of the independent Kazakhstan for three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, resigned from the presidency in favour of his appointed successor in 2019, he still remained the country’s informal ruler pulling strings in the background.

That is to say until now, because Tokayev has recently removed his predecessor from every position in response to the seemingly never-ending protests. This means the official end of the Nazarbayev era.

Which of the above scenarios is true? Like in most cases, the truth probably lies somewhere between the partial truths above. Along with the social tensions brought more to the light by the pandemic, high energy prices must certainly have had a role in the unrest. On the other hand, you cannot rule out the possibility of a foreign destabilization attempt of a country in an extremely difficult geopolitical position, either. Undoubtedly, Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan has not been a shining star of pluralistic democracy and the rule of law, and many of its citizens probably want to live in a country with more freedom.

Either way, and regardless of what led to the escalation of violence, the fact of the matter is that Moscow’s military assistance was once again needed to restore order in yet another former Soviet republic following Belarus, where Russia had to help out the local dictator after a fraudulent election in 2020.