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Kazakhstan’s President Qasym-Zhomart Tokhaev has said that troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a Russian-led organization – will begin leaving the country on January 13.
The organisation’s troops were called in to help stabilize the situation in Kazakhstan, a country that has faced riots sparked by rising fuel prices and turned deadly amid a showdown with former President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s loyalists. .
A statement issued by the CSTO on January 12 – consisting of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Tajikistan – said the withdrawal of about 2,000 troops from Kazakhstan would take at least ten days.
Earlier in the day, Toqaev attended a meeting in Almaty of the city’s emergency operations task force and met with family members and colleagues of security forces killed during the violence. The exact number of people killed during the protests is still unclear.
CSTO troops arrived in Kazakhstan last week after the country’s leadership sought help from the Russian-led military bloc, as protests become violent in cities across the country.
Kazakh media reported on January 12 that another 1,700 people had been detained since the protests were suppressed, bringing the total number of detainees to almost 10,000.
Because of the crisis, Toqaev declared a state of emergency on January 5 and demanded that the CSTO send troops.
He claims that “foreign-trained terrorists” are behind the protests, which he said were aimed at toppling the government. But analysts have said the protests appear to be an internal power struggle between Tokhaev and supporters of former leader Nursultan Nazarvaev, who continues to be a powerful figure in the country despite stepping down as leader in 2019.
After dismissing the government, Tokhaev removed Nazarbayev from the post of head of the National Security Council, a rather powerful position in Kazakhstan.
Tokhaev has also fired the head of the National Security Committee, Karim Masimov, one of Nazarbayev’s allies. Masimov has been arrested on charges of high treason. Other senior security officials have also been detained by authorities.
Meanwhile, human rights experts from the United Nations on January 11 called on the Kazakh authorities to stop “the unrestricted use of force, including lethal force against protesters.”
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