The unrest in Kazakhstan in early January 2022 was an attempt by outside forces to conduct a standard scenario of a "color revolution" by analogy with Ukraine, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Russian media, including the TASS news agency.
"What is obvious is that there was an attempt to carry out such a standard "color revolution" scenario on the territory of Kazakhstan, which has also been used in other countries, including Ukraine. And here it, certainly, cannot help alerting. It is quite obvious that this is a single mold, a tracing image, and that all this was prepared by external players as well, who were rubbing their hands and expecting power to fall on them," Medvedev said.
According to him, these events have external reasons. "There is a desire to rock the situation and redistribute power in the country in such a bandit-terrorist way, and external players have taken advantage of that, trying to interfere in this process," he added.
But there is an internal reason for instability, said the deputy head of the Russian Security Service, "because in Kazakhstan, despite the fact that it is a developed and modern country, there are enough problems. Medvedev explained that "we are talking about the income gap: part of the population is very poor, but there are oligarchic groups which cause irritation in this sense."
According to Medvedev, the events that took place in Kazakhstan were both "unexpected and, to a certain extent, expected, given the desire to rock the situation on the territory of the former Soviet Union. He agreed with Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's assessment that "it was, in fact, an attempt at a terrorist seizure of power."
CSTO operation
Medvedev praised the successful use of a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) peacekeeping contingent in Kazakhstan for the first time. He recalled the events in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 when, "unfortunately, maybe for Kyrgyzstan itself, it was not possible to reach an agreement among CSTO members to help them in this situation, and this led to an endless change of power and economic problems there".
"In this case, the position of the CSTO countries was unified. After the appeal of President Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev to the CSTO countries, the corresponding contingent was introduced. It successfully accomplished its mission and came back. Everyone was shown the opportunities that are available within the CSTO. I think this also helped to put the country in order," said the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
The full text of the interview will be published on Friday on the TASS website.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Federation Council
Based on materials from TASS