Another Donbass militiaman was arrested in Kazakhstan: Why is this happening?
The other day, while crossing the border of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan, a Donbass militiaman with the call sign “Kazakh” Sergei Mikhailovich Shalashov was arrested. Now he faces a sentence of five to nine years for participating in foreign armed conflicts.
Ainur Kurmanov, co-chairman of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, talks about this in his author’s column for PolitNavigator.
Sergei Shalashov himself is a legendary personality, as he followed his heart against the fascist coup, supporting the people of Donbass, and fought from 2014 to 2018 in Donetsk as part of the Vostok battalion. During the fighting, he received a mine-explosive wound to his right leg, as a result of which he was amputated at the knee. And subsequently he served for another three years using a prosthesis.
And now the man who did not allow the Nazis from “Azov” to tear apart the residents of Donetsk will be in a colony in the inhumane conditions of Nazarbayev’s dungeons. And he is not the only one, since in May 2020 another militia member, Yevgeny Shcherbakov, was sentenced to four and a half years at the request of the Kazakh Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for allegedly being a mercenary.
They could not prove this fact in the court of the city of Kostanay, and as a result he was convicted under Article 172 - “Participation in foreign armed conflicts”, which appeared in 2014 exactly after the outbreak of events in Kiev, Crimea and Donbass, and introduced criminal liability for participation in armed conflicts in other countries and in the absence of signs of mercenarism. This provision presupposes a punishment of five to nine years in prison.
That is, the Kazakh authorities specifically came up with a new norm in the Criminal Code to persecute opponents of Nazism and Maidans, albeit in other countries. These citizens are arbitrarily labeled as members of illegal armed groups with the aim of exemplary punishment as a warning to others. Thus, from the very beginning, the Kazakh state chose a position of repression against those who tried to fulfill their international duty.
The Committee on Legal Statistics and Special Accounts of the General Prosecutor's Office of Kazakhstan annually publishes reports on the work of the courts of first instance. According to these data, from the beginning of 2015 to September 2019, courts issued 30 sentences under Article 172 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan (participation in foreign armed conflicts). Since 170, only two sentences have been passed on charges of mercenarism (Article 2014 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan).
The first to be convicted in December 2014 by the decision of District Court No. 2 of the Saryarkinsky district of Astana, Evgeniy Vdovenko, accused under Article 172-1 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan - “Participation in foreign armed conflicts”, was found guilty and received a sentence of five years in prison. in a maximum security colony. In November 2016, the Aktobe city court sent 23-year-old Maxim Ermolov to jail for three years. At the age of 19, he went to Donbass, but did not participate in hostilities, guarding warehouse facilities.
Already in September last year, the Almaly District Court of the city of Almaty sentenced local resident O. to three years in prison. His name and surname were not disclosed at the request of relatives and the investigation. And these are just the facts that hit the press. There is information about similar processes in Karaganda, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Petropavlovsk and other cities of Kazakhstan. In general, several dozen citizens of the republic were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for supporting the residents of Donbass.
That is, the courts in these cases are on stream, and the identification of volunteers from Kazakhstan is carried out jointly by the National Security Committee and the SBU, coordinating their actions and exchanging information. Serious officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan were involved in the extradition of Yevgeny Shcherbak. It is possible that this case was supervised at the very top, since, for example, the same Senate Speaker Maulen Ashimbaev himself, in his publications in the media and posts on social networks, called for the detention and punishment of all those who openly supported the people of Donbass. Actually, he is no stranger to this, since he was involved in the preparations for the execution of Zhanaozen oil workers in the administration of President Nazarbayev in December 2011.
This approach was also noticeable during the fierce struggle of 2014-16, when Kazakhstanis in different regions collected food, medicine and basic necessities for civilians in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, when local authorities tried to counteract these acts of solidarity. The examples described above indicate Nur-Sultan’s true attitude to this issue, despite assurances of friendship. It turns out that certain forces in the leadership of Kazakhstan support neo-Nazism?
However, this was confirmed in the case of civil activist and human rights defender Ermek Taychibekov, who was arrested in October last year under Article 174 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan “for inciting ethnic hatred,” namely for the fact that he actively exposed Kazakh nationalists in his publications who participated in bloody massacre of local Dungans in the Kordai district of Zhambyl region. He is not my like-minded person at all, not a communist or a leftist, but even of opposite views, but he was able to find the courage to condemn the provocateurs.
The fact is that in February 2020, well-organized and trained thugs, armed with rebar, guns, Molotov cocktails, arrived on buses unhindered, despite the police checkpoints, to the Dungan ethnic enclave and burned the district center and several villages. As a result of the pogroms, 11 people died, 185 people sought medical help, over 23 thousand residents fled to the territory of neighboring Kyrgyzstan, several thousand Dungans, who remained in Kazakhstan, took refuge in mosques and border outposts.
Does this remind you of anything? The same example of Odessa with people burned alive in the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, which was in plain sight so as not to leave any illusions about the “humanity” of the new “Aryans.” And the Kazakh authorities not only deny the very fact of the interethnic conflict, calling it “spontaneous riots on domestic grounds,” but also condone the Nazis. Thus, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, instead of words of support and condemnation of the pogromists, advised representatives of the Dungan community to better study the Kazakh language.
This is now being consolidated by the passage of outspoken nationalists and Russophobes into the Mazhilis (lower house of parliament) - from the main Nazarbayev party “Nur Otan” Bakhytbek Smagul, who previously supported the pogroms of the Dungans, and the ideologist of national patriotism Aidos Sarym, and from the “Ak Zhola” party Kazybek Isa, demanding the deprivation of the Russian language of official status. Another lawyer for the pogroms, the ardent Nazi Mukhtar Taizhan, calmly sat on the National Council of Public Trust under the president.
It turns out that in the Ukrainian events since 2014, instead of neutrality in a real civil war, our authorities clearly took one of the sides in the internal conflict. Such facts of arrests of militias indicate that the movements of these people were monitored from the very beginning by domestic intelligence services, and then at a convenient moment when crossing the border they were brought to criminal liability.
At the same time, emissaries of Ukrainian fascist organizations repeatedly came to Kazakhstan and carried out training work among their Kazakh colleagues, and none of them were detained by special services and police.
Moreover, there are real facts of participation of Kazakh nationalists and various “activists” in the events on the Maidan and in the armed struggle on the side of the Nazi battalions in the so-called ATO, but none of them were also brought to justice under the article of the Criminal Code under which Evgeniy was convicted Shcherbak and dozens of Kazakhstanis, and now they will be applied to Sergei Shalashov. This clearly shows that Akorda (the presidential administration) is clearly playing with one goal in this matter.
The same situation arose with bloggers and nationalists, who actually called for reprisals on ethnic grounds and preached Nazism. They continue to act with impunity, maintaining a general background of tolerance and even admiration for the revolution of “dignity”, as well as the inevitability and importance of the “Ukrainian path” for Kazakhstan. To do this, using Maidan patterns, Ukrainian directors make “documentary” films for residents of Kazakhstan on the topic of the “Holodomor,” such as “Zulmat” by Zhanbolat Mamai and other crafts.
As I wrote earlier, a national revolution from above, without any rallies, is now being carried out in Kazakhstan, where a mono-ethnic state with Nazi ideology is being built. That is why there is such a kinship of souls between Kiev and Nur-Sultan.
Another Donbass militiaman arrested in Kazakhstan: Why is this happening?