There will be a lot of blood. Press about protests in Kazakhstan
TEXT: VALERY LITONINSKY, 6 January 2022, 13:43
В Казахстане отключен интернет, не работают банки и уже дестяки погибших - за протестами внимательно следит весь мир.
korrespondent.net
In Kazakhstan, the Internet is turned off, banks are not working and the children of the victims are already not working - the whole world is closely following the protests.
Kazakhstan is in the top of world news. Observers agree that the mass protests triggered by the rise in gas prices are in fact caused by deeper reasons - widespread dissatisfaction with the government, corruption, nepotism and an authoritarian political system that did not leave people the opportunity to express their disagreement in any legal way. ...
Korrespondent.net has collected publications of the Western press about the events in Kazakhstan.
Goodbye grandfather!
The anger of protesters in Kazakhstan is largely directed against Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has concentrated enormous power in his hands over the long years of rule, the Guardian notes.
"Nazarbayev and his family monopolized all sectors - from banks to roads and gas. These protests are against corruption," protest protester Zauresh Shekenova, a 55-year-old resident of Zhanaozen, a city in the Mangistau region of Kazakhstan where the unrest began, quoted the Guardian.
"It all started with the rise in gas prices, but the real reason for the protests is poor living conditions, high prices, unemployment, corruption," she says.
"The authorities are trying everything possible to calm the situation - both with promises and threats, but so far it does not work," says Almaty political analyst Dosym Satpayev.
Signal to the Kremlin
For the Kremlin, writes the American New York Times, these events represent another potential challenge to autocracy in the neighboring country. This is the third uprising against authoritarianism in a country that has allied relations with Russia after Ukraine and Belarus.
The chaos here threatens to undermine Moscow's influence in the region at a time when Russia is trying to assert its economic and geopolitical power in Belarus and Ukraine.
Other countries of the former Soviet Union are also closely monitoring developments that could energize opposition forces elsewhere.
The protests in Kazakhstan are a warning signal for the Kremlin, according to Russian expert on Central Asia Arkady Dubnov, who describes the authorities of this country as "a smaller copy of the Russian ones."
"There is no doubt that the Kremlin would not like to see an example of how such a regime begins to speak with the opposition and yield to its demands," Dubnov emphasizes.
Long game
The protests in Kazakhstan are likely to continue for a long time, Erika Marat, an adjunct professor of regional and analytical studies at the National Defense University in Washington, told German television station Tagesschau. She explores the problems of violence, mobilization and security in Central Asia and the post-Soviet space.
The protests began peacefully, the protesters did not attack anyone, says Erika Marat, but the authorities provoked an escalation. Unfortunately, we see this again and again in the post-Soviet space and in other parts of the world: autocrats think they can intimidate demonstrators with water cannons, tear gas and the number of riot police.
In fact, this is well known to researchers of conflicts: the use of force by the state in such a situation only leads to an escalation and an increase in the number of protests. The same thing happened in Kazakhstan: they tried to suppress the demonstrators by force, as a result, the situation got out of control, and people have already begun to use violence against the authorities.
Role of the USA
Events in Kazakhstan are important for the United States as well, writes the New York Times, as it is an important country for American energy interests. Exxon Mobil and Chevron have poured tens of billions of dollars into fields in western Kazakhstan, right where the protests began.
The Kazakh government, while maintaining close ties with Moscow, cultivated an equally close relationship with Washington, seeing American investment as a counterbalance to Russian influence.
In turn, the American government, the newspaper notes, has long been much less critical of post-Soviet authoritarianism in Kazakhstan than in Russia or Belarus.
