The withdrawal of the Russians from Kazakhstan is not too sure

The current president of Kazakhstan has said that the situation in the country has returned to normal and has appointed a new prime minister, who does not fall under the influence of the previous president. The stabilization of the country should lead to the withdrawal of foreign troops present on Kazakh territory, belonging to the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty, to which Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan adhere. The protests had started on January 2 due to the increase in fuel and had revealed the state of profound social, political and economic crisis in the country, a symptom of a generalized discontent that manifested itself in large protests, violently crushed by the police forces, to who had been allowed to shoot directly into the crowd. The demonstrations had been classified as episodes of terrorism on behalf of unidentified foreign powers and were functional to the Russian action to reiterate that the Kazakh country could not get away from the influence of Moscow, which, moreover, feared a repetition of the Ukrainian case . The crackdown on protesters was blessed by Beijing as a means of eliminating the protests, perhaps an attempt to justify by analogy, its action in Hong Kong and against the Chinese Muslim population. The president of Kazakhstan highlighted the need for the intervention of Russian troops and other allied countries to restore order in the country against the dangerous terrorist threat, not well identified, which threatened to conquer the main economic center of the country, Almaty; which would have resulted in the loss of control of the whole of Kazakhstan as a consequence. According to the Kazakh president, allied foreign troops should leave the country within ten days. In reality, it will be interesting to verify whether these timelines are respected: the Russian fear of a country drift towards the West does not seem to coincide with a sudden withdrawal of Moscow’s troops, especially after the effort made to suppress the Kazakh protest; a stay of only ten days would not allow effective control of the evolution of a situation of discontent that represents much more than economic dissatisfaction. Defining the protest as a studied emanation of a terrorist plan, without expressly indicating its instigators, means defining it as a sort of attempted subversion of the country from within. That these instincts are entirely true has little importance for Russia, which must reiterate its almost total control over what is now defined as its own area of ​​influence, well defined and absolutely no longer subject to negative variations. After all, Putin himself endorsed the terrorist theory of the Kazakh president, as a justification for the armed intervention he himself planned. Out of the total of 2,300 soldiers employed, the fact that the majority was Russian appears to be quite significant; however, the real needs of the country are clearly present to the new government of Kazakhstan, which intends to promote programs aimed at promoting income growth and making a tax system more equitable where there are serious inequalities; however, hand in hand with these intentions, an increase in the number of police and army forces is planned to better protect the security of the country. These intentions seem to disprove the terrorist hypothesis, used only for the preservation of the Russian regime and intervention, but admit the presence of internal difficulties, difficulties that could potentially make it possible to leave the area of ​​Russian influence. especially in the presence of a democratic turnaround, an attempt previously repressed several times at the local level without external intervention. The need for Russian aid shows how much the country has the ability and the will to seek an alternative to the present situation. These premises place the Kazakh country at the center of attention not only of the obvious Russian interest, but also of the West and the whole world, because it can destabilize the region and Russian control; this implies a new front of possible friction with the USA, certainly not willing to accept Moscow’s warning in an anti-Ukrainian key, where the tension is destined, also for this precedent, to reach a limit situation.