Kazakhstan

So what’s really happening there? I made this page in Jan 2022 as protests and riots spread across Kazakhstan. I returned in 2025 and note that Wikipedia reports on the events, and suggests that it was started by the repeal of oil price caps. Otherwise, my contemporaneous notes …

1. The kazakh crisis is only one threat hanging over the uranium market from the Economist
2. Kazakhstan’s bloody turbulence will affect all of central Asia from the Economist
3. Do Kazakhstan’s protests signal an end to the Nazarbayev era? – from Al Jazeera written by Yevgeniy Zhovtis an activist in Alma Aty. Their prequel identifies that Russian troops were sent to Kazakhstan although according to this interview they guarded official buildings, and did not engage with the protesters.
4. A Color Revolution or a Working-Class Uprising?: an Interview with Aynur Kurmanov on the Protests in Kazakhstan – A Zanovo-media correspondent interviewed Aynur Kurmanov – one of the leaders of Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan posted at Left East Blog, with a footnote about reforms and Russian troop movements.
5. A query on Kazakhstan at the ft.com
6. aljazeera.com tag = kazakhstan/ – from Al Jazeera, articles tag

Sadly, in the wake of the Ukraine War, this slipped my mind, but for various reasons, I looked at it again and then looked for whether the reforms had lasted. The French Institute of Foreign Affairs comments, and summarises the positions as,

“Domestically, the government launched a series of reforms aimed at creating a “New Kazakhstan” and a “listening state”. Yet, over the ensuing three years, these initiatives have fallen short of delivering meaningful democratization or addressing the country’s pressing socio-economic challenges.”