Paul Goble
Staunton, May 19 – Two weeks after Vladimir Putin launched his broadscale invasion of Ukriane and as relations between Russia and Kazakhstan were deteriorating, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for improving the readiness of his country’s military (tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/tokaev-nazval-prichinu-sozdaniya-podrazdeleniy-vedeniya-468133/).
Now, with the war in Ukraine grinding on and Moscow possibly looking for another place to win a victory for Putin, Tokayev has ordered his army to reorganize both to prepare for a possible invasion and also to improve security where weapons are held lest they fall into the wrong hands (tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/ministr-oboronyi-formiruyutsya-podrazdeleniya-sposobnyie-468952/).
Ruslan Zhaksylykov, the Kazakhstan defense ministry, says that the reorganization will involve the creation of special military units capable of acting in the event of an invasion or a domestic political crisis, the latest example of how what Putin has done in Ukraine is echoing in other parts of the former Soviet space.
(For background on the security situation in Kazakhstan and Tokayev’s concerns, see this writer’s articles at jamestown.org/program/russian-suggestions-that-kazakhstan-is-russias-enemy-frighten-and-outrage-kazakhs/ and jamestown.org/program/moscow-outraged-that-kazakhstan-becoming-a-second-ukraine/.)
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