Putin now has troops in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and strategic states in the Caucasus and the Middle East. What’s next?
The Moscow government used 75 planes to send troops to Kazakhstan.
Heavily armed Russian troops began arriving in Kazakhstan late last week as part of a Russian-led military alliance force after Kazakh President Kassim-Jopart Tokaiev called for help in cracking down on local protests.
Thus, Russia is expanding its military presence in another state. The list also includes Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia (an important part of Georgian territory is under Russian military occupation), Chechnya, Syria and Armenia.
It is not clear how many soldiers could arrive in total. They could stay in the country for about a month, according to the head of the defense committee of the Russian parliament. Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political consulting company R Politik, says that the maximum participation of CSTO allies will not exceed 3,500 soldiers. As for Russia, it has decided to “participate symbolically, but its forces will be there mainly for the protection of infrastructure,” she added. The Kazakh president said the order had been largely reinstated in Kazakhstan, but pledged to continue the campaign to suppress protests with the help of Russian troops, Bloomberg notes.
The Moscow government has used 75 planes to send troops to Kazakhstan, according to the defense ministry.
The intervention marks the second major move by the Kremlin in as many years to support an allied country in the face of massive protests.
In 2020, Russian President Vladimir intervened to support the efforts of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko to suppress population protests.
Russia also sent paratroopers to Belarus’s border with Poland in late November last year, where hundreds of migrants had set up camps to try to enter the European Union.
The Kremlin said at the time that troops had been sent for exercises, but the move coincided with an accumulation of Russian military forces near the border with Ukraine.
The continued militarization and integration of the Russian and Belarusian armed forces has continued since 2020.
Russia has sent Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets to Baranovichi Air Force Base in Belarus, and their planes and pilots will remain permanently in Belarus, where they will conduct joint missions and patrol the two countries’ borders.
A few days after the arrival of the air force, Russian troops began arriving in the Belarusian city of Hrodna, near the border with Poland and Lithuania, to set up a joint military training center.