The crisis in Kazakhstan throws Putin into a dilemma
Crisis in the east
Does the escalation in Kazakhstan increase the risk of war in Ukraine? The protests throw Putin into a dilemma
In the Central Asian country, the number of victims is increasing. Can the Kremlin chief afford a two-front conflict shortly before the Ukraine talks in Geneva?
Actually, Vladimir Putin had arranged everything: The threatening backdrop of 100,000 soldiers ready to fight on the Ukrainian border is in place. The ultimate demand for an end to NATO’s eastward expansion has been placed. Everything now seemed ready for talks between his future Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and his US counterpart Wendy Sherman this Monday in Geneva on the future of the European security architecture.
But then a popular uprising broke out in Kazakhstan. At the request of the Kazakh President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev, Putin was induced to send around 3,000 Russian “peacekeepers” to the neighboring country last Friday, where not only the Russian spaceport Baikonur is located, but also over three million ethnic Russians.
How long the Russian forces will stay in the country is unclear. The situation seems to have calmed down a bit, but remains confusing. Over the weekend, the authorities published a record of 164 deaths, more than 2,200 injured and over 5,000 liability since the outbreak of the protests. However, the number of unreported cases is likely to be a lot higher.
The situation in the east is becoming more and more unpredictable
Many in the West are now asking: How does the Kazakh crisis affect Putin’s position on the Ukraine question? Will he postpone his suspected invasion plans because the security vacuum in Kazakhstan requires his full attention? Or could even the opposite be the case, according to the motto: Now more than ever?
After all, the situation with the trouble spots in Russia’s immediate neighborhood, i.e. Belarus, Ukraine and now Kazakhstan, is becoming increasingly unpredictable. Putin may feel compelled to show his strength. otherwise the next mass protests might soon take place in Moscow’s Red Square.
Before the talks in Geneva, Putin’s envoy Sergei Ryabkov is definitely marking the harshness. One would be prepared to «no concessions», said Ryabkov in an interview with Russian press agencies. The signals that have been received from Washington and NATO in the past few days are “disappointing”. It is about reports that the US is ready to talk about limiting NATO exercises in Eastern Europe and the number of missile systems. A withdrawal of American troops and a ban on accepting new states into NATO are out of the question, however.
US diplomats have now made it clear to the New York Times what the concrete consequences will be if Russia plans to invade Ukraine. As if the major Russian financial institutions would be the first to be excluded from global transactions. The export of US technologies and US consumer goods to Russia could also be banned. In addition to financial and economic sanctions, the US Department of Defense is also threatening to arm Ukraine in order to wage guerrilla warfare against Russia.
Europe remains outside the delicate talks
It is noteworthy that the Europeans who are directly affected by the talks between the USA and Russia are largely left out of the game. This is because Russia only wants to negotiate directly with the leading NATO power, the USA, and they have granted this request. On the other hand, Europe takes itself out of the running because of its notorious polyphony.
This can be seen most clearly in the dispute over the “Nordstream 2” pipeline in the Baltic Sea. The completed but not yet commissioned pipeline has been heavily criticized by Eastern and European countries for years because of Putin’s gas deliveries.
The German government under the then Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed through the project against all objections. Her successor, SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz, is sticking to this line. In an interview on Saturday, SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, also shortly before the decisive Ukraine talks, pleaded for an end to the dispute: “There has to be a political and legal peace on such a question at some point.”