Kazakhstan riots: it's far from over

News of protests and government response to protestors actions continue to pour out of Kazakhstan on January 5th

News of events in Kazakhstan continue to come in every hour, despite the fact that government of that Central Asian republic created disruptions in the work of local internet and mobile communication networks.

• President Tokayev announced “terrorist intervention” in Kazakhstan and requested urgent military assistance from the countries members of ODKB (defense union of some of the post-Soviet republics with member countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and others)

• According to reports newsroom of CIS channel Mir 24 was destroyed by protesters that occupied their studio in the city of Almaty

• Also went off air TV channels KTK, NTK, Sputnik Kazakhstan, First Channel Eurasia. Meanwhile the Kazakh state channels like Khabar 24 continue to broadcast

• Protesters occupied Almaty International Airport. According to administration of the airport all workers, passengers and security of the airport left the building

• Emergency situation is now declared in all of Kazakhstan according to executive order by president Tokayev that earlier appointed himself as the chief of National Security Council replacing in this position former president Nursultan Nazarbaev

• Former president Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed for life as Yelbasy (father of Kazakh nation) and after whom the newly created capital, Astana, was renamed to Nursultan, left Kazakh territory to receive medical treatment abroad. Reports don’t say for which country did he leave Kazakhstan, but chances are he is in Moscow now. In the meantime protesters have toppled one of his monuments in the smaller city near former capital and country's largest city Almaty.

• According to multiple reports protesters are now armed as they took away some armaments from the hunting store, also from police and military that refused to suppress rioters

I have to make few important notes regarding these recent events:

• Despite that Soros supported organizations try to get ahead of the protests, like famous Telegram channel Nexta (pronounced as Nekhta that means “somebody” in Belarusian language) or in Ukraine they now have a coordination center for Kazakh “maidan”, these events were largely not organized by these forces and up to this point represented discontent not of the liberal intelligentsia class, like was the case in Belarus, but of the working class, unemployed and poor

• I didn't see any clear signs that these protests were directed against Russians of Kazakhstan, that represent a significant portion of the population with roughly 3.5 million. Protests have taken over not only Center and South of the Republic, but also predominantly Russian speaking cities in the North.

• At this point I express careful support for the protesters as this should send a very clear signal to authorities in Russia that people's patience with draconian anti-human measures and the artificially created dismal state of economy is not endless. This is especially important before Russian Duma will be reviewing in second reading Federal QR Code law this month that, if passed by Parliament, will basically deprive Russian citizens of the right to live unless vaccinated and registered for this digital cattle (slave) tag.

Here is a link to a video posted by Russian blogger and internal politics analyst El Murid a.k.a. Anatoly Nesmiyan. Video is in Russian, but gives a great set of visuals from Kazakhstan to better understand what is going on there.