Tokayev doesn’t believe in war
Kazakhstan’s president breaks away from Putin
6/17/2022, 9:57 p.m
He is actually the guest of honor on Putin’s podium in St. Petersburg. But Kazakhstan’s president is audibly distancing himself from the Russian president. Tokayev neither adopts his war rhetoric, nor does the West see the economy as finished.
Kazakhstan will not recognize the eastern Ukrainian separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. That said President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg. The UN’s right to self-determination conflicts with states’ right to territorial integrity. That’s why they don’t recognize Taiwan, Kosovo, Abkhazia or South Ossetia. “And this principle obviously also applies to quasi-state areas like Donetsk and Luhansk.” Tokayev thus placed himself in clear contrast to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, whose guest of honor he sat on the podium in St. Petersburg. Russia has recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and cites their defense as one reason for the war against Ukraine.
Although Kazakhstan is a close Moscow ally, Tokayev did not fully support the Ukraine war. “There are different opinions, we are an open society,” he said. Here, too, he referred to the right of states to integrity. The president of the oil-rich country also assessed the global economic situation differently than Putin, who saw the dominance of the West coming to an end. There is a crisis, Tokayev said, according to Russian agencies. “But at the same time you have to realize that the US and the West are generally in a solid position in terms of economic development.”
When mass protests against Tokaev’s authoritarian rule broke out in Kazakhstan in January, Putin sent military aid. The protest collapsed. Tokayev now complained that young, well-educated people are leaving Russia and Kazakhstan. “They contribute to the progress of other countries. I think that’s our failure.”
Putin sees the West as an aggressor
In his previous speech, Putin justified the war against Ukraine that had been going on for almost four months as being without alternative. “In the current situation, against the background of increasing risks and threats to us, Russia’s decision to conduct a special military operation was forced and necessary,” Putin said in St. Petersburg. The West previously “literally pumped up Ukraine with its weapons and its military advisers,” said the Kremlin chief.
Putin blamed the economic policies of the USA and the EU for global inflation. “What is happening now is not the result of the past months and certainly not the result of a military special operation that Russia is conducting in the Donbass,” Putin said. The reason for the price increases is “systematic errors in the economic policy of the current US government and the European bureaucracy”.