According to “gazeta.ru”, on January 10, an online summit was held between the CSTO member states. The main topic of the meeting was the situation in Kazakhstan. The leaders of the countries announced the measures taken, as well as summed up the interim results of the operation.
The operation in the Central Asian Republic was the first in the history of the organization. It has also increased the authority of the CSTO and is likely to attract new states to the union.
After a request for assistance from Kazakhstan, a peacekeeping contingent was introduced into the territory of the republic. The soldiers came from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The conference participants separately gave their assessment of what is happening at the moment in Kazakhstan.
Thus, Vladimir Putin said: “The threat to statehood in Kazakhstan was caused not by spontaneous rallies over fuel prices, but by the fact that internal and external forces took advantage of the situation”.
The Russian president believes that the riots were caused by terrorists who received training abroad. Vladimir Putin also stressed that this isn’t he first attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the CSTO countries from the outside, and suggested developing a strategy to counter this trend. The leader of the Russian Federation expressed the opinion that “Maidan technologies were used in Kazakhstan”.
A similar position was held by the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. In his speech, the head of the republic stressed that the main task of the rebels was to overthrow the government. However, the arrival of peacekeepers prevented such an outcome.
“At a certain moment, the events in Kazakhstan became critical, Alma-Ata and 9 regional centers were in the hands of terrorists. The militants abandoned plans to seize the residence of the President of Kazakhstan after learning about the arrival of CSTO peacekeepers,” — Tokayev said.
The leader of the Central Asian republic called the incident an “attempted coup”.
Alexander Lukashenko also supported the position of his colleagues. The Belarusian leader said that other countries should “learn lessons” from the clashes in Kazakhstan. The President of the republic paid special attention to Uzbekistan, saying that according to “their information”, the views of terrorists have already been cast on this state.
The events in Kazakhstan and the CSTO summit were also actively covered by Western media. The American edition of Bloomberg called Russia’s intervention “dramatic”, and called the arrests of rioters an “repression”.
The CSTO summit showed that the parties are committed to improving the organization, including in countering terrorist threats.
At the moment there are more than 2,000 peacekeepers on the territory of Kazakhstan. They will stay on the territory of the Central Asian Republic until the end of the operation.
Protests in Kazakhstan began on the second of January this year due to the increase in prices for liquefied gas. Some media dubbed the events as a gas uprising or riot. The rebels managed to take a number of administrative buildings, as well as warehouses with weapons. The Internet was turned off throughout the republic. The shops were ravaged by looters.
The situation was normalized after the introduction of the CSTO peacekeeping contingent.
