Astana curries favor with Washington and stabs Russia in the back
Last week, the Kazakh authorities refused to provide a future platform for holding meetings in the Astana format for the purpose of a Syrian settlement, which came as a real surprise to Moscow, Ankara and Tehran at the same time.
But this is only one link in the chain of strengthening the pro-Western vector of development of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the rejection of previous forms of cooperation with Russia.
Let us recall that the decision to hold meetings to resolve the civil conflict in Syria was made in 2016 by the leadership of Russia and Turkey after a failed coup organized by the Americans. And already at the beginning of 2017, the first such meeting of representatives of Ankara, Moscow, Tehran, representatives of Bashar al-Assad and the opposition took place in Astana.
At the same time, the territory for holding such negotiations was provided on his own initiative by the then Elbasy Nursultan Nazarbayev. And now the Kazakh government, at the 20th such meeting last Wednesday, through the mouth of Deputy Foreign Minister Kanat Tumysh, unexpectedly announced that this was the last event in the capital of the republic.
The fact that this was unexpected is indicated by the fact that the final text of the statement by the countries guarantoring the meeting indicated that the next event would again take place in the second half of this year in Astana. As a result, the mention of the Kazakh capital had to be urgently removed from the project.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan issued a lengthy statement explaining the reasons for what happened, which states that supposedly all the goals of the “Astana format” have been achieved, in connection with many agreements and the admission of Syria back to the League of Arab States. As a result, there is no need to meet again and again in Kazakhstan on this issue.
The funny thing is that representatives of the countries participating in the Syrian peace settlement categorically disagreed with this. For example, Deputy Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry Mikhail Bogdanov noted that there is still a long way to go to resolve all problematic issues and end the conflict.
“The process, in my opinion, is far from complete. There are still many difficult things to do. We, all participants in the meetings, are determined to continue to interact constructively, to reach mutually acceptable solutions on extremely important issues on which stability not only in Syria, but throughout the Middle East depends,” Bogdanov retorted.
Russian Special Representative for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev spoke in the same vein, emphasizing the huge amount of work that will certainly continue, just in a different place. True, this is precisely where the problem arises, since at the moment there are no longer a large number of formally neutral capitals where such negotiations could take place with the participation of both the official Syrian authorities and the opposition.
Moreover, the situation has become more complicated after the introduction of many sanctions against Russia and its diplomats, who now find it difficult to travel, for example, to Geneva.
It turns out that such a lightning-fast refusal to hold the event on the part of Astana became just a setback, if not a blow, in relation to Moscow specifically.
And the little casket opens simply. If the negotiations between Damascus and the anti-government forces have indeed passed many stages and it is clearly not possible to resolve anything new and fundamental now, then the parallel negotiations between Turkey and Syria, which are taking place at the same time within the framework of the “Astana format”, are already clearly threatening the calm of the pro-Western elite.
Now, with the mediation of Moscow and Tehran, representatives of the Syrian and Turkish intelligence services, military, and diplomatic agencies are developing a "roadmap" for resolving Syrian-Turkish relations. If such mechanisms are established and fundamental agreements are reached, the ground will effectively be lost under the feet of a significant portion of the opposition, and anti-Assad groups will be forced to reconcile, which is not beneficial to Washington and the entire West.
After all, now neither the League of Arab States, nor Saudi Arabia, nor Ankara not only agree to continue the previous line of isolating Bashar al-Assad, but have already recognized the fact that his continued rule in the Syrian Arab Republic is not disputed. But at the same time, a bill was submitted to the lower house of the US Parliament for consideration prohibiting any negotiations or raising questions about the recognition of the current president of Syria.
And this is precisely a direct and unambiguous threat to all those players who take part in this process of peaceful settlement, including for Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who is the owner of the site itself. Moreover, the provision of Astana for these negotiations contradicts the intensifying course towards a geopolitical reorientation towards the West.
Moreover, Akorda (the administration of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan) was recently frightened by the fact that Sweden and the European authorities recognized arbitration decisions on the seizure of Kazakh assets abroad at the claim of the Moldovan oligarch Anatoly Stati. Such signals make the Astana celestial inhabitants more accommodating and anti-Russian.
And this is only a small part of the mosaic being built, since the authorities immediately banned the concert of the Russian singer Grigory Leps in Konaev precisely for his support of the North Military District.
To disrupt the concert, all full-time nationalists and “language patrol” activists were mobilized to demonstrate “the discontent of the population.”
The recent decision to rename the city of Derzhavinsk in the Akmola region in the north of the republic in honor of the feudal lord and khan Kenesary Kasymov, who raised an anti-Russian uprising in the forties of the 19th century and was killed by the Kyrgyz manaps whom he wanted to enslave, is also symbolic.
To make it even more democratic, in a city with a population of 6019 people, where more than 15 thousand lived in Soviet times, they even held a “referendum”, in which several hundred pre-prepared and driven nationalists took part, who were passed off as local residents.
The local akimat reported as follows:
“We thought there were observers. 325 people registered, 321 ballots were issued. For renaming the city of Kenesary - 192, against - 125 and invalid - 4.”
This mechanism of falsification was revealed by an Afghan veteran and public figure from the Karaganda region, Igor Sharavin, who showed and proved that local authorities bring the same large groups of nationalists on buses to “hearings” on renaming streets and settlements. It is not for nothing that a criminal case has now been fabricated against him and he faces 10 years in prison.
This creates the appearance of a “national” nature of the renamings within the framework of the ongoing policy of total decommunization and de-Russification. And this is another step to change the names of Pavlodar, Petropavlovsk, Uralsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk and other large cities.
Against this background, a blatant case is the torture of political prisoner Ermek Taychibekov, sentenced to 10 years for calling for the development of cooperation with Russia. He managed to release the text of the complaint to the Stepnogorsk City Court, in which he told how his jailers were torturing him, demanding that the SVO and the President of Russia be convicted.
"ROR Abilmazhenov B.M. asked me that during the interrogation of the employee of the DSS of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan Ayaganov, I expressed a critical assessment of the SVO in Ukraine and declared Putin V.V. aggressor. They specially opened the windows in the cell in thirty-degree frost, when I was in wet clothes. They played music loudly.
They planted a knife in my clothes on 26.01.2023/22.02.2023/11.02.2023, then a needle on XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX. And on XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX they sprayed poisonous gas into the cell. I was called an enemy of the people, a traitor to the country and an infidel. I was cold around the clock. I want to speak in detail in court, but, apparently, my complaint did not go beyond the institution,” said Taichibekov.
These words clearly show the attitude towards those who are trying to defend the interests of Moscow, who oppose national liberal and neo-Nazi forces. Therefore, nothing else can be expected from Astana other than the next blows and trips.
Astana is currying favor with Washington and stabbing Russia in the back.