The events that took place in Kazakhstan’s in early January still loom large. Kazakhstan is still tracing the instigators and participants of the January unrest, as law enforcement officers find arms caches in the cities and countryside almost every day. Deputy Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Marat Syzdykov has recently confirmed that the country’s authorities are leading a full-scale investigation into the January events.
The investigation itself is classified; for that reason, all charges against the individuals that had been apprehended and suspected in the “sponsoring” of those events are yet to be brought up. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that the January unrest in Kazakhstan was pre-arranged and pre-meditated. This is evidenced by the well-documented facts and tell-tale signs of masterminds pulling the strings: centralized control from the outside as weapons were seized from the shops in a centralized manner — cars were driving up and taking the cargo.
As time goes on, it is becoming increasingly clear that chaos in the republic could have reached colossal magnitude sweeping across not only Kazakhstan but also neighboring countries. With this in mind, the on-going hysteria driven by the US and their Western allies about “the imminent Russian invasion into Ukraine” is understandable since it hinges on the grudge that the West has been holding against the first successful CSTO operation in Kazakhstan carried out under real-life conditions.
Although the investigation into the January unrest in Kazakhstan is not over yet, the fingerprints of the US, UK and a range of other Washington’s allies are all over the place. It does not really come as a surprise considering that the bosses of the current US administration have a long-standing relationship with former senior Kazakh officials. First of all, now-detained former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee Karim Massimov had been “in bed” with Hunter Biden, the US president’s son involved in a range of drug and sex-related controversies as well as a scandal regarding Burisma company in Ukraine. Even before Ukraine, Hunter Biden tried to establish “Bidens’ family rule” over former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan in 2012–2014. A testament to this effort is a remarkable group picture featuring Joe Biden standing by Karim Massimov while Hunter is beside an “enigmatic” Kenes Rakishev, a fabulously rich Kazakh businessman. He was the one “watching over” Hunter Biden in Kazakhstan, precisely after which his “successful business-era” began.
The US-led Western information warfare also played a huge role in those events. The allied CSTO assistance to Kazakhstan exposed many resources and personalities. Those include, first of all, Western-backed “activists”: Facebook saw a lot of posts calling for demonstrations to prevent the participation of other CSTO members in this mission. In this way, Western resources attempted to exert pressure on MPs who were to approve the decision to dispatch peace-keeping forces to Kazakhstan.
Another testament to this are the results of information warfare instigated in Kyrgyzstan where protests were organized via Facebook by a certain Perizat Saitburkhanova, closely tied with Next TV, a media resource pertaining to Ravshan Jeenbekov, an opposition and pro-Western political figure.
The Voice of America editorial team, a body that is recognized by the Russian Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent, spearheaded the US-driven information warfare. On January 7, Voice of America published a slanderous propaganda report dubbed “Russia and CSTO allies entered Kazakhstan.” Moreover, the headline of this American resource on Twitter was much more aggressive and biased — “Russia and CSTO allies OCCUPY Kazakhstan.”
At an apparent instigation by the US, a country that has been exerting external control over Ukraine, in the wake of the January unrest, Ukrainian authorities published a guide with the advice on how to smear both CSTO and the Kazakh President Tokayev who invited peacekeepers. The Ukrainian media also got “The Patriot’s glossary” developed by the so-called Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security under the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine that dictates in what expressions the Ukrainian media should or should not describe the events in Kazakhstan.
By the way, the crisis in the relations between Belarus and Ukraine was developing along the same lines: it started off with information attacks, training of nationalist militants and arms shipments from Ukraine to Belarus. Then Ukraine turned into a haven for Belarusian extremists that were not welcomed by Europe. Not long after, Kyiv switched to direct hostile actions at the official level.
On January 18, Segodnya.kz Telegram channel reported that the UK intelligence agencies took part in the information warfare against Kazakhstan, but failed in their efforts and switched to a “Plan B.” The channel, in particular, highlighted a report by The Guardian citing, as is customary for the British, “some unknown sources in the Kazakh capital.” The Guardian contended that Nursultan Nazarbayev and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev were allegedly negotiating redistribution of assets in the republic. In other words, the article by the Guardian was directly aimed at fostering negative attitude towards Tokayev, a Kazakh leader outside of the British calculation. Meanwhile, the Kazakh people, for most part, have a pretty positive opinion of him.
According to Segodnya.kz, the presence of a nation-wide spy ring of the UK and US intelligence agencies is evident: consider just the NGOs — the Soros Foundation (banned in Russia), USAID (banned in Russia), the British Council (also banned in Russia). There is hardly any doubt that the interests of Kazakhstan itself are simply non-existent for Western powers.
The Western involvement in the events in Kazakhstan is also evidenced by its very response to them. As a matter of fact, on January 20, members of the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the January events in Kazakhstan. During the deliberations, MEPs put Tokayev’s actions in the spotlight as a number of deputies called for sanctions to be snapped on top Kazakh officials. For that reason, if anyone had thought that the conflict in Kazakhstan had an internal origin, the European Parliament’s resolution clearly showed who was the final mastermind and would-be beneficiary of the coup d’état. As the now-routine tradition demands, the so-called “civilized world” rushed to defend “peaceful protesters,” engaged in not-so-peaceful seizing of administrative buildings, weapons, bank and shop robberies, shooting police officers and bystanders.
Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.