Thursday, January 06, 2022
Russia sends soldiers
Dozens of civilian casualties in Kazakhstan
The unrest in the Kazakh city of Almaty continued to escalate overnight. After only eight security guards were reported to have been killed, there are now said to be numerous civilian victims. Meanwhile, Russia is responding to a request for help and is sending soldiers.
During the particularly serious riots in the megacity of Almaty, the military is also used against demonstrators at night. Dozens of people were reportedly dead. People tried to storm various police buildings, the Kazakh television station Khabar 24 quoted a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, as reported by the Russian state agency Tass. “Dozens of attackers were eliminated”. This suggests that there may have been fatalities. Official information on civilian deaths is not yet available. Kazakh authorities had announced the deaths of at least eight police officers and soldiers in the past few days. According to the Kazakh Ministry of Health, there have been more than 1,000 injured so far.
In various places in Almaty, there were operations against demonstrators who are reported to be armed. Residents have been asked to stay in safe places. The websites of the Kazakh media could not be reached from abroad in the morning either. The exact location was therefore unclear. Reports are difficult to independently review.
Military alliance CSTO sends soldiers
In view of the unrest in Kazakhstan, Russia has transferred soldiers to the Central Asian country. Paratroopers were dispatched as part of a peacekeeping force, said the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Kazakhstan had previously asked the Russian-led military alliance for help. In addition to Russia and Kazakhstan, the alliance also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These states have also sent armed forces to Kazakhstan, it said.
The military alliance had already announced that night that it would comply with Kazakhstan’s request for help. The Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote on Facebook that the soldiers should be deployed for a limited period “to stabilize and normalize the situation in the country”. The announcement said that one of the main tasks of foreign soldiers was to protect important state and military facilities. The authoritarian-led Kazakhstan has been experiencing unprecedented protests for days.
The trigger for the unrest that broke out over the weekend was displeasure at the significantly higher fuel prices at petrol stations in the oil and gas-rich ex-Soviet republic with more than 18 million inhabitants. They turned into protests, some of which were violent, critical of the government. In response, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dismissed the government. Tokayev called the riots “an undermining of the integrity of the state”.