by Chris Black
This is a pretty smart play by NATO, creating this whole other crisis while Putin is focused on the Ukraine situation.
Protesters now storming the main government building in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty. pic.twitter.com/lemKcpILL8
— Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) January 5, 2022
- Russia put their air regiment at the military airfield near Orenburg on combat alert for deployment to Kazakhstan.
- In addition to this, according to preliminary reports the 11th Separate Guards Engineering Brigade, which is stationed in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky (near Ukraine), may be sent to Kazakhstan as well.
Kazakhstan is again in the midst of a nation-scale internet blackout as of early morning Thursday. While service was available, President Tokayev gave a televised speech appealing to Russia for assistance to “protect the state.”
Below there are videos of Almaty last evening and a few others. In two days, the city turned into a center of protests.
Today it was ruled by protesters and looters, but tomorrow everything can change – the President of Kazakhstan announced tough measures. Military specialists from the CSTO countries are flying to the country.
The Kremlin published the statement by Pashinyan as chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council on the deployment of a peacekeeping contingent in Kazakhstan.
To send CSTO forces to Kazakhstan, the permission of the Russian parliament is not needed, for this there is a charter of the organization, its forces are in constant readiness, Kalashnikov, head of the State Duma committee on the CIS, told RIA Novosti.
In connection with the appeal of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan K.-Zh.K. Tokayev and in view of the threat to national security and the sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan caused, inter alia, by outside interference, the CSTO Collective Security Council, in accordance with Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty, decided to send Collective peacekeeping forces of the CSTO in the Republic of Kazakhstan for a limited period of time in order to stabilize and normalize the situation in this country.
Nikol Pashinyan
Chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council,
Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia