Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.
Ukraine War, and Putin's Comments, Stir Worry in Kazakhstan
by Mike Eckel
At a summer camp north of Moscow attended by youth vetted and groomed
by Kremlin-sponsored organizations, Russian President Vladimir Putin
was warmly welcomed when he visited recently, taking questions from
campers, including one about Kazakhstan.
After complimenting longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, Putin then
insulted him, dismissing the history of Central Asia's largest country.
"He created a state in a territory that had never had a state before,"
Putin said during the Aug. 29 visit, according to a Kremlin transcript.
"The Kazakhs never had any statehood. He created it."
The comment touched a major nerve in Kazakhstan, where Russian actions
in Ukraine are being watched with fear and where ethnic Russians make
up nearly one-quarter of the population.
It came also as Nazarbayev himself signaled doubts about a Kremlin-led
project called the Eurasian Economic Union, a project whose rejection
by Ukraine set in motion the events that have led to war.
That all former Soviet republics have been spooked by Russia's actions
in Ukraine is without question. The bigger question is how much those
actions have changed Moscow's relationships with those countries, and
whether the United States benefits from it, analysts said.
'Crimea Was Our 9/11'
For elites in Central Asia--intellectuals, policy makers, business
leaders, high-placed government officials--Moscow's annexation of
Crimea and the military operations in eastern Ukraine were shocking,
according to Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russia expert at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, who traveled to the region in
April
"Crimea was our 9/11," Mankoff said he was told during his trip. "It's
an event that causing a lot of rethinking around the region."
"If there's one country that's worried about redrawing borders, it's
Kazakhstan," he said.
In Kazakhstan, a sprawling nation that shares borders with China and
Russia and is nearly twice the size of Alaska, Nazarbayev has reigned
since before the Soviet collapse, and consistently walked a fine line
with Moscow.
He's been involved in negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine,
traveling to the Belarusian capital Minsk on Aug. 26 to meet with
Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and Belarussian leader
Alexander Lukashenko.
''On the eve of his trip, though, Nazarbayev told a Kazakh TV channel
that Kazakhstan's membership in the Economic Union was not set in
stone.
"If the rules spelled out in the agreement aren't followed, Kazakhstan
has the full right to refuse membership in the Eurasian union," he
said. Kazakhstan "will never be part of an organization that presents a
threat to (our) independence. Our independence is the greatest treasure
for which our forefathers fought. We will do everything possible to
defend that."
Nazarbayev's comments "were probably more of a reassurance to Kazakhs
rather than a thumbing their nose at Putin," said Martha Brill Olcott,
a longtime Central Asia scholar with close ties to many elites in the
region. Still, "this has to be annoying Putin."
At the youth camp near the town of Seliger, three days later, Putin
gave what appeared to a retort that, to many Kazakhs and academics,
trivialized and misconstrued Kazakh history. He also spoke of the
"Eurasian idea" and insisted Kazakhs see the benefit to "remaining in
the space of the larger Russian world."
Kazakh Umbrage
In the days that followed, Kazakhs lit up Internet chat rooms,
[1]online media and Twitter feeds. Videos uploaded to YouTube showed
Kazakhs abrading drivers in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty for having
Russian flags on the cars' dashboards.
Nargis Kassenova, who heads the Central Asian Studies Center at KIMEP
University in Almaty, said a number of Kazakh experts think Putin's
comments were a direct response to Nazarbayev's interview.
"The comments and especially the one on lack of statehood raised even
more suspicions of Russian intentions since it was the discourse on
lack of proper statehood in Ukraine that accompanied Russian actions
there," she said in an email interview.
Calls and emails to the Kazakh Embassy in Washington seeking further
comment were not immediately returned.
Putin appeared to have two goals, Olcott said: "One, he's trying to get
Nazarbayev's goat and two, any Russian living in Kazakhstan would agree
with him.
Kazakhstan has one of the largest populations of ethnic Russians living
outside of Russia: just under 25 percent, according to the 2009 census.
In some northern regions bordering Russia, however, ethnic Russians
make up close to half of residents, outnumbering even Kazakhs.
Bilateral trade is among the largest for post-Soviet republics, and
Kazakh oil and gas extraction is growing substantially, particularly in
the multinational-run Caspian Sea fields where Chevron has major
investments. Lacking access to international maritime routes,
Kazakhstan is overwhelmingly dependent on Russia pipelines for export.
And the Kremlin seems to be turning the union into a way to keep
wayward republics from going the route of Ukraine, said Alexander
Cooley, a Columbia University scholar and author of the 2012 book
"Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central
Asia."
"Kazakhstan never wanted to be exclusively partnering with Russia. Now,
they're changing borders. Why can't they change the rules of this
organization," Cooley said. "It's credibility as a legal organization
is in doubt. How could it not be, given what's happening in Ukraine."
For the United States, Central Asia holds less importance than it did
during the war in Afghanistan when U.S. military personnel and
equipment transited the region. That's changed with the wind-down in
Afghanistan.
Still, where Washington is concerned, keeping Kazakhstan from being
stuck under Moscow's thumb is beneficial.
"Anything that projects Kazakhstan in the international arena, rather
than strictly a post-Soviet space, would be useful to the US
interests," Cooley said.
__________________________________________________________________
[2]http://www.voanews.com/content/russia-kazakhstan-ukraine-fears/24400
51.html
References
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMBgscWcWFc
2. http://www.voanews.com/content/russia-kazakhstan-ukraine-fears/2440051.html