What's new
Frozen in Carbonite

Welcome to FiC! Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Protests in Kazakhstan

Anyway, taking Nazarbayev's property in UK jurisdiction won't do anything but push him closer into Kremlin's firm embrace. Good job Boris, as always! :)
No one actually needs Nazarbayev anymore (or rather, if they do, they can and would go through Tokayev), so it's safe to morally grandstand now, despite (or in a sense, because of) the fact that Nazarbayev and his clan lost their official positions very early in this mess.

Now if they move against Tokayev, that's a wholly different kettle of fish.
 
No one actually needs Nazarbayev anymore (or rather, if they do, they can and would go through Tokayev), so it's safe to morally grandstand now, despite (or in a sense, because of) the fact that Nazarbayev and his clan lost their official positions very early in this mess.

Now if they move against Tokayev, that's a wholly different kettle of fish.
Yuriy Podolyaka makes comparisons to the 2013-2014 mess in Ukraine. He says that the armed groups were created and trained inside Kazakhstan, by Nazarbayev's people controlling internal security. To me it also looks more like an internal matter and less like external aggression, despite there being some external pressure and IMO an external trigger for the internal security controlling the armed bands, coinciding with the Russia-US negotiations. Most Western governments seemed to be taken by surprise.
 
Yuriy Podolyaka makes comparisons to the 2013-2014 mess in Ukraine. He says that the armed groups were created and trained inside Kazakhstan, by Nazarbayev's people controlling internal security. To me it also looks more like an internal matter and less like external aggression, despite there being some external pressure and IMO an external trigger for the internal security controlling the armed bands, coinciding with the Russia-US negotiations. Most Western governments seemed to be taken by surprise.
The timing of all this shit seems ridiculous. Some are speculating it was meant to distract Russia. Others say it was meant to undermine Russia. Whatever it is, most seem rather taken aback by the speed of Russia's response and determination and how fast the situation has been contained relatively.
 
The timing of all this shit seems ridiculous. Some are speculating it was meant to distract Russia. Others say it was meant to undermine Russia. Whatever it is, most seem rather taken aback by the speed of Russia's response and determination and how fast the situation has been contained relatively.
This is such an unclear mess, but yet another speculation that is that Russia (or pro-Russian clans within Kazakhstan) intentionally stepped on this landmine, to deal with the explosion early and quickly. Some big mess is practically an Olympic tradition at this point when hosted in China or Russia (2008, 2014, 2022).

Unfortunately, pretty much the only thing that's actually clear now is that this sort of thing doesn't happen this quickly without a very harsh confrontation between Kazakh clans, and Nazarbayev is the one that had official control over the Kazakh security apparatus.
 
This is such an unclear mess, but yet another speculation that is that Russia (or pro-Russian clans within Kazakhstan) intentionally stepped on this landmine, to deal with the explosion early and quickly. Some big mess is practically an Olympic tradition at this point when hosted in China or Russia (2008, 2014, 2022).

Unfortunately, pretty much the only thing that's actually clear now is that this sort of thing doesn't happen this quickly without a very harsh confrontation between Kazakh clans, and Nazarbayev is the one that had official control over the Kazakh security apparatus.
So who backstabbed the backstabbed the backstabbed or stirred the shit-stirrer the shit-stirrer? o_O
 
While we can't really know, but the thing that most supports that interpretation of events is that Tokayev appeared to immediately fold, dismissing the government and accepting practically all of protester demands. Just boom—everything the protesters wanted was accepted immediately. Of course, this was naturally taken as weakness, and the protesters started doing a terrorism instead (practically simultaneously all over, which suggests a deeper level of organisation).

However, in actuality, Tokayev's initial actions were most directed against the Nazarbayev clan, and once that was done, he instead turned around and acted very harshly, including pulling outside support from CSTO. Thus, Tokayev is very far from dumb, and his appearance of initial weakness was almost certainly deliberate, using it to both get rid of his rivals and egg on the protesters in order to further consolidate power. ... What's less clear is who was also pushing the protesters to turn very violent. (Sure, NEXTA and various foreign groups were pushing them towards terrorism, but that doesn't alone explain the level organisation and sudden access to firearms; someone in Kazakhstan wanted it.)
 
To be honest, I will always be surprised by the skill of the British/US services that are so competent they manage to sneakily set up so many revolution without clear trace of their involvement or previous warning yet are always so incompetent they get easily countered by Russia and its allies.
 
To be honest, I will always be surprised by the skill of the British/US services that are so competent they manage to sneakily set up so many revolution without clear trace of their involvement or previous warning yet are always so incompetent they get easily countered by Russia and its allies.
CIA/MI6 left so little trace in the Ukraine that they have a private floor in the office of the SBU building in Kiev. They left so little trace in Belarus that NEXTA openly admits to be funded by Polish government. If you really think that they don't also have intelligence support, you're either naive, or more likely, being deliberately obtuse.

So that's really one case where 'Russia and its allies' lost very badly, and one case where they 'won'.

As for the third case, Kazakhstan, no one here is saying that this was definitely a CIA/MI6 op. Sure, its beginnings had the outward appearance of a Ukranian scenario, simply by analogy with the above cases, with both NEXTA activating and a self-proclaimed leader of Kazakh protests coming out of Paris through his organisation in Kiev. But that's doesn't really prove that they are responsible in its organisation (e.g. they could just be opportunists). For example, I wouldn't put it past Tokayev himself to have organised it as a kind of false-flag (since he's the obvious direct beneficiary), or an attempt of Nazarbayev against Tokayev, but I can't know that either.

And as Wakko also suggested, the fact that (unlike in say Ukraine's case), the Western response was so apparently ill-prepared probably means that they CIA/MI6 had relatively little to do with it.
 
CIA/MI6 left so little trace in the Ukraine that they have a private floor in the office of the SBU building in Kiev. They left so little trace in Belarus that NEXTA openly admits to be funded by Polish government. If you really think that they don't also have intelligence support, you're either naive, or more likely, being deliberately obtuse.
The point is that these tend to be after the fact, compared to the constant claims that all these riots and such were in fact organized and prepared by the West, which I find highly amusing considering the quite famous lack of subtelty of the CIA and the utter complexity of organizing large-scale riots without being detected. Call me naive if you want, but from my perspective, Western intelligence organizations tend to be a lot less focused on the kind of subtle social control the WP ones were (in)famous for and their competence tends to be vastly overstated by the media (especially the CIA/NSA when it comes to anything else than SIGINT). So, after years of seeing on SB/SB/here people claiming that the CIA must be behind this or that movement, I cannot help but to be snarky.
 
I honestly not sure what was so subtle about Ukraine. It was as blatant as it could be in terms of foreign involvement from US officials openly encouraging protestors (imagine a Russian diplomat going to late year protests in Washington and giving out free food to the people present) to the deep ties of a lot of people in new Ukrainian government to various American interest groups.

It just flies under the radar for some people because they consider 'democracy promotion' and 'American economical interests' as something entirely separate and independent from intelligence operations. Classical case of enemy dastardly spies and our brave agents.
 
I honestly not sure what was so subtle about Ukraine. It was as blatant as it could be in terms of foreign involvement from US officials openly encouraging protestors (imagine a Russian diplomat going to late year protests in Washington and giving out free food to the people present) to the deep ties of a lot of people in new Ukrainian government to various American interest groups.

It just flies under the radar for some people because they consider 'democracy promotion' and 'American economical interests' as something entirely separate and independent from intelligence operations. Classical case of enemy dastardly spies and our brave agents.
So, yes, what I said, jumping on an ongoing situation to exploit it. Not causing it in the first place like we're supposed to believe our cunning spymasters are doing.
 
So, after years of seeing on SB/SB/here people claiming that the CIA must be behind this or that movement, I cannot help but to be snarky.
I understand the reasons for snarkiness, but the flip-side is that you have various structures like the NED that are formed explicitly outgrowths of the CIA. These were normalised to do openly what was previously done covertly, but some people just don't care to make that distinction. It's all just one big nexus of NGOs and alphabet soups from their point of view.
 
So, yes, what I said, jumping on an ongoing situation to exploit it. Not causing it in the first place like we're supposed to believe our cunning spymasters are doing.
I do not perceive a difference here. It is like Russian interference into American elections. Russians didn't create Republican-Democratic divide but they supposedly exploited it. Maidan protestors were rather obviously not astroturfed from Britain or something. But no one really claims that. People are talking about how Western intelligences financed or/and directed the movement that already existed. 5 billion dollars for 'democracy promotion' and so on and on.

I understand the reasons for snarkiness, but the flip-side is that you have various structures like the NED that are formed explicitly outgrowths of the CIA. These were normalised to do openly what was previously done covertly, but some people just don't care to make that distinction. It's all just one big nexus of NGOs from their point of view.
Pretty much this. For me (and a lot of other people) there is no distinction between NGO doing democracy promotion and CIA doing intelligence operations. It is the same thing done slightly differently and the former is normalized to be legal and acceptable. To put it simply: I do not believe that political-affilated NGOs are independent actors. They always act at the behest of the respective governments while providing a veneer of the deniability.
 
To be honest, I will always be surprised by the skill of the British/US services that are so competent they manage to sneakily set up so many revolution without clear trace of their involvement or previous warning yet are always so incompetent they get easily countered by Russia and its allies.
Nice sarcasm, but I think it's warranted in this case. IMO it was an inside job and Nazarbayev's connection to the UK played only the role of an activator ahead of the coming Geneva negotiations. But the armed groups were created, trained and armed domestically, by Nazarbayev's people in internal security. They jumped on the January 2 protests, most likely encouraged by their friends in MI6 (there had to be a reason why now, and I don't know of anything else), but the other side was ready for them. The Russian intelligence services had to do their job pretty well here, I doubt that Tokayev, relying on security services full of Nazarbayev's people, would have a chance on his own.
That doesn't change the fact that there is very well visible a recipe for western coup in a post-soviet country. Get cozy with the local ruler, help him to siphon the country's resources into a fat London account, install broad media control that will prepare the public, then help initiate a coup using local mercenaries and take control of it, while holding the local elite firmly by their bank accounts. It worked as a charm in Ukraine. It failed in Belarus because the elites there were already mostly under sanctions and their western bank accounts were already gone. It failed now in Kazakhstan because part of the elites (the Tokayev clan) worked with a different external force, and they were able to prevail simply because their ally was able to shuffle its soldiers into the country. And I don't mean the CSTO contingent, there had to be Russian specialists that arrived earlier and helped Tokayev with the information and command part of the initial fight. If the geography were different, maybe the coup would succeed.
Really, a good foreign agent law and control of one's own internet are crucial for the survival of real democracy :)


imagine a Russian diplomat going to late year protests in Washington and giving out free food to the people present
We don't need to imagine anything. Not exactly Fashington, but close:

FB_IMG_1544573525000.jpg
 
Last edited:
Heh, British or US diplomats giving food to gilets jaunes would be supporting the government by poisoning the protesters. Though, of course, if a diplomat bringing food to protesters is the sign of a conspiracy to overthrow the current government, that government must have been pretty weak from the start.
Nice sarcasm, but I think it's warranted in this case. IMO it was an inside job and Nazarbayev's connection to the UK played only the role of an activator ahead of the coming Geneva negotiations. But the armed groups were created, trained and armed domestically, by Nazarbayev's people in internal security. They jumped on the January 2 protests, most likely encouraged by their friends in MI6 (there had to be a reason why now, and I don't know of anything else), but the other side was ready for them. The Russian intelligence services had to do their job pretty well here, I doubt that Tokayev, relying on security services full of Nazarbayev's people, would have a chance on his own.
That doesn't change the fact that there is very well visible a recipe for western coup in a post-soviet country. Get cozy with the local ruler, help him to siphon the country's resources into a fat London account, install broad media control that will prepare the public, then help initiate a coup using local mercenaries and take control of it, while holding the local elite firmly by their bank accounts. It worked as a charm in Ukraine. It failed in Belarus because the elites there were already mostly under sanctions and their western bank accounts were already gone. It failed now in Kazakhstan because part of the elites (the Tokayev clan) worked with a different external force, and they were able to prevail simply because their ally was able to shuffle its soldiers into the country. And I don't mean the CSTO contingent, there had to be Russian specialists that arrived earlier and helped Tokayev with the information and command part of the initial fight. If the geography were different, maybe the coup would succeed.
Riiiiight. So, once again, the plan was superbly organized by the cunning anglo services but the execution was totally incompetent, especially in Belarus where the intelligence agencies were so stupid they didn't realize the sanctions they set up were preventing their complex conspiracy from succeeding. AKA, the duality of the hypercompetent omnipotent intelligence agency with failures in the plan that a six-year old kid would have noticed right away. This is why I'm being sarcastic: you're looking for the patterns you want to explain the causes of all the events. Of course, the notion that you don't necessarly need a huge foreign conspiracy to have a lot of people pissed by a government that has no issue shooting on protesters doesn't come to mind.

Imagine if I blamed Russia for the yellow vests protests... Or maybe Italy, since one of the diplomats or ministers of the far-right Italian government of the time went to meet yellow vests at some point. Maybe Macron should have done that, now that I think of it: claim the yellow vests were mercenaries trained by Mélenchon under orders of Putin, then shoot them all with the military after calling the US Marines to the rescue.

EDIT: to be honest, I really understand why the Baltic countries and some others want to ensure NATO stays inside their borders, 'cause when we see the mess happening in the countries within Russia's sphere of influence... let's recap, there are those who shoot protesters en masse (and even if they got to a situation where they legitimately need to shoot them, that's NOT a good point), the rebels who shoot down an airliner, the government who tortures protesters and hijacks an airliner to arrest people in it, the ones literally at war with each other leading to killer robots being used and mass population displacement. This might be the CIA-controlled sheeple speaking, but I, huh, wouldn't want to end up in Moscow's sphere if I was in the Baltics, and I would really, really not want my sovereignty to depend on nothing else than the promises of said Moscow. For all the problems encountered in EU/NATO Central Europe, at least this shitte isn't happening (except for Sweden, but these monsters will face a reckoning sooner or later for all the crimes inflicted on their population).
 
Last edited:
Most anti-Belarus sanctions were lifted by the US in late 2015 and by the EU in early 2016, despite ostensibly being due to Belarus' human rights record, which did not change during that time at all. This resumed Batka's multivectorness, and was explicitly about opening the Belarus to Western NGOs (this isn't any kind of secret; EU officials at the time were quite open about this).

Your criticism about 'failures in the plan that a six-year old kid would have noticed right away' simply misses the factual timeline of events.

And that's neglecting the bit about the strong possibility that in this case, a hypothetical foreign conspiracy is much more likely being of Russian origin, rather than Western. If indeed there were any foreign conspiracies involved at all (although I'm inclined to believe there were at least local conspiracies of political power struggles).

But you can go back to pretending that people here are blaming Kazakhstan situation as a Western coup attempt, rather than this being simply one possibility, and one that looks increasingly less likely as the situation develops. Yes yes, we know that you are very white and fluffly, and would it is a complete absurdity to even consider the possibility.
 
But you can go back to pretending that people here are blaming Kazakhstan situation as a Western coup attempt, rather than this being simply one possibility, and one that looks increasingly less likely as the situation develops. Yes yes, we know that you are very white and fluffly, and would it is a complete absurdity to even consider the possibility.
Well, I'm reacting to Wakko's highly elaborate theory-crafting here, saying that it was being done in Kazakhstan as well (but failed because of yet another move in the shadows).
 
Riiiiight. So, once again, the plan was superbly organized by the cunning anglo services but the execution was totally incompetent
Uhm, you having a problem with reading comprehension today? I explicitly wrote that I think in Kazakhstan it was an inside job. Was there some superb MI6 plan that I described? I don't think so. So what are you actually talking about?
I don't think there are some superb plans afoot, at least not from the West's side. It's just decades of money being invested into soft power, pro-western media, russophobia, political influence, all done quite openly. Then when a chance comes to change the political leadership, it is attempted. It succeeded in Ukraine, failed in Belarus and Kazakhstan. And actually Ukraine is a horribly, horribly bungled job. Coutry in ruin, civil war for 7 long years, economy down the drain, abuse of power comparable to a South American dictatorship, a society divided more than in the US... it should have been turned into a shining example of a post-soviet country going European, instead it is now a horrible warning and IMO a significant part of why the Belarus and Kazakhstan coup attempts failed. Nobody wants to be a second Ukraine.

especially in Belarus where the intelligence agencies were so stupid they didn't realize the sanctions they set up were preventing their complex conspiracy from succeeding.
In Belarus the preparation was different, it coincided with Luki's magical 80% win in the presidential election, which resulted in protests organized by the opposition and very ostentatively helped from the outside. NEXTA coordinated the whole show, openly bragging in interviews about being paid and fed information by Polish intelligence. It did not succeed because Lukashenko didn't give up like Yanukovich, and accepted help from the Russians early on, just like Tokayev in Kazakhstan. Yanukovich in Ukraine didn't do so, instead he was all the time on the phone with Biden and let his country being thrown into chaos just to save his wealth.

EDIT: to be honest, I really understand why the Baltic countries and some others want to ensure NATO stays inside their borders, 'cause when we see the mess happening in the countries within Russia's sphere of influence...
Russia has no sphere of influence. It has just started to create one, with Belarus' economic integration. That is precisely the reason for all the chaos, the post-soviet countries who try to play both sides usually end up couped and in total chaos. The Central Asian countries are a completely different animal culturally, you cannot compare them to European countries.

Well, I'm reacting to Wakko's highly elaborate theory-crafting here, saying that it was being done in Kazakhstan as well (but failed because of yet another move in the shadows).
That is not at all what I wrote. Let's see: IMO it was an inside job and Nazarbayev's connection to the UK played only the role of an activator ahead of the coming Geneva negotiations. But the armed groups were created, trained and armed domestically, by Nazarbayev's people in internal security.
I still think that there was a connection to a western intelligence service, most likely the MI6, simply because the timing is soooo convenient, and because the British jumped on Nazarbayev's property in the UK as soon as he expressed his support for Tokayev. To start screaming about human rights abuses by Tokayev and then do something that actually strengthens his position because it weakens Nazarbayev, now that is pretty obviously just a move against Nazarbayev specifically, and that has to have a reason.

Though, of course, if a diplomat bringing food to protesters is the sign of a conspiracy to overthrow the current government, that government must have been pretty weak from the start.
It's a foreign power interfering in a country's democratic process, something inherently undemocratic and hypocritical. Foreign diplomats shouldn't come anywhere near the democratic processes in the country where they are stationed, simply because they're not part of the demos.
 
Last edited:
RIA made an interview with a former Minister of Culture and advisor of Nazarbayev, name is Ermukhamet Ertysbayev: Эксперт объяснил, почему ввод миротворцев ОДКБ в Казахстан "взбесил" Запад - РИА Новости, 10.01.2022
Main points:
  • there are some $376 billion of western investment in Kazakhstan, mainly in hydrocarbon extraction (I guess the investors are getting pretty nervous about the Russian paratroopers right about now :) We know how the profit margins of Western oil and gas companies fared after Putin came to power in Russia)
  • Participation of outside forces in the coup attempt is unquestionable
 
This is a seriously strange situation where we have only one narrative and not a "narrative vs counter-narrative" situation.

On one hand, it is not inconceivable that it is a red on blue and call in external forces to help with one.

On the other hand, it is also no inconceivable that it was an attempt to prematurely flush out potential agitators before they were ready.

Or both. :cautious:
 
This is a seriously strange situation where we have only one narrative and not a "narrative vs counter-narrative" situation.

On one hand, it is not inconceivable that it is a red on blue and call in external forces to help with one.

On the other hand, it is also no inconceivable that it was an attempt to prematurely flush out potential agitators before they were ready.

Or both. :cautious:
I've read some more context today. Tokayev also has property abroad, but in... Moscow :) He was until recently quite a powerless public figure, with Nazarbayev's clan controlling security forces and Nazarbayev together with his oldest daughter Dariga controlling the parliament through chairmanship of both chambers - Nazarbayev the lower chamber, his daugher the Senate. Then, in May 2020, Dariga loses her Senate Chair position, and in November 2021 the control of the lower chamber goes to Tokayev himself when he succeeds Nazarbayev as the head of the largest political party, Nur Otan. So, the power shifts dangerously from the pro-western, russophobic Nazarbayev to the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese Tokayev. A dangerous situation, threatening the Western powers with significant loss of influence and revenue in Central Asia...

Another interesting aspect that Kofman mentioned in a tweet:
How does Russia's mil deployment into KZ, while China sat there in relative silence, fit with the glib narrative of 'China is eating Russia's lunch in Central Asia.' If we look at power as the ability determine outcomes in the region, seems this is an interesting case to examine.
How indeed? He then continues:
...in general I think efficacy of Chinese economic influence overstated, capacity for Russia to shape security and by extension political outcomes underappreciated.
Kofman is reading my mind. Despite Crimea, Donbass and Syria, the Russian ability to use force to achieve outcomes which the western powers are used to achieve with economic influence, is still seriously underestimated. Comparing GDPs in nominal numbers is exacerbating the - potentially fatal - mistake.
 
No matter what the out come will be.

Here's hoping it will involve Nazarbayev and especially his piece of shit of a daughter hanging.
 
UPDATE


Baikonour cosmodrome is being renforced.


Apparently peacekeeping troops of "prosoviet" CSTO will be withdrwaing from Kazakhstan within 48 hours.

Info about withdraw comes from RIA Novosti via PAP.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom