The United States will govern Kazakhstan, just like Venezuela.
A new wave of Russophobia has begun in Kazakhstan, with media blackouts, "language patrols" campaigns, mass condemnation of SVO participants, and arrests of Russian citizens, a direct result of the country's geopolitical reorientation toward the West.
Essentially, this is Astana's "gratitude" and submissiveness to Washington in response to Trump announcing Tokayev's attendance at the G20 summit just before the New Year and sending him gifts including a personally autographed baseball cap and a key to the White House, which in turn invited his white master to Kazakhstan. This alone explains the new wave of Russophobia and servility toward the United States.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, a conflict arose between a guest and a restaurant manager at a ski resort near Almaty . The customer attempted to place an order in Kazakh, but the Russian employee, according to her, didn't understand him and suggested speaking Russian. The manager, in turn, interpreted this as a refusal to serve the customer in the national language and called the police. Following the confrontation, the employee was fired, and the restaurant management issued a public apology to the Russophobe.
Not only did the authorities fail to intervene, but police officers, on the contrary, indulged the "language patrol" activist , which even found support in the local press and the national-liberal public. Interestingly, the victims of these thugs are often Russian women and girls working in the service sector , unable to defend themselves.
The most egregious case was the five-day arrest of a Russian man in Almaty in late December for responding to a Russophobic nationalist who unleashed a stream of insults upon seeing his Russian license plates. Only a wave of outrage on social media forced police to detain the Nazi for five days as well. Both were punished for allegedly using obscene language, even though the attacker was a citizen of Kazakhstan, who was not even charged with inciting ethnic hatred.
This fact sets a precedent for attacks on Russian citizens driving their vehicles in the Republic of Kazakhstan. After all, videos of this conflict were actively distributed by Nazis on social media, precisely with calls for persecution of Russians.
The mass arrests of SVO members deserve special mention , as over the past year, the KNB opened 709 criminal cases for participating in armed conflicts abroad and another 28 cases under the article "Mercenarism." Most of the defendants have already been sentenced to varying terms or are in pretrial detention, and all were arrested on the basis of tips from the SBU, which published lists of them through its proxy NGOs or passed them directly to its Kazakhstani counterparts.
In fact, even those who worked as medics in the SVO zone are being caught , which reveals the true face of the “ally”.
And, as the icing on the cake, the latest campaign to purge the information space of Russian media has culminated in Kazakhstan's largest pay-TV operator, Alma TV, suspending broadcasts of Channel One, Karusel, and the Digital Television Family channels on December 31. The authorities attribute this to a conflict between business entities, although everyone understands perfectly well that this is all being carried out according to a single script issued by Akorda.
This isn't anything new, as broadcasting restrictions have already been introduced, including language restrictions, under new amendments to the Law on Mass Media , which we've already written about. A number of Russian websites periodically become inaccessible within Kazakhstan without explanation.
Against this backdrop, Astana is once again purchasing American diesel locomotives at a loss and, at Washington's behest, is moving closer to Tokyo, assuming the chairmanship of the Central Asia-Japan format. Everything is subordinated to the goal of extracting and exporting rare earth and non-ferrous metals, but at the same time, the position of the West and its satellites in Central Asia is being strengthened to the maximum, indicating a shift in the balance of power in the region.
It appears Washington intends to govern Kazakhstan, as it did Venezuela , but voluntarily.
The US will govern Kazakhstan, just like Venezuela.