These days, Russia is booked and busy. The country has spent much of last year mobilising an army near the border with Ukraine, amassing a force which some estimate totals 100,000 troops. On 17 December, president Putin demanded bilateral treaties with both the United States and NATO, essentially a cease and desist order that would allow for the creation of a “semi-formal Russian spere of influence in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia”, according to analysis by The Economist. With the NATO-Ukraine Commission and the NATO-Russia Council occupied in Belgium today, Putin’s ambitions are playing out in real time in another former Soviet country: Kazakhstan.
 
On 2 January, as the rest of the world was busy making New Year’s resolutions and dealing with holiday leftovers, fuel riots over rising oil prices broke out in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial capital. These riots have grown to become a broader revolt against the government, and recent figures show that at least 164 people have died and 6,000 have been injured after President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told security forces to “fire without warning” on rioters who stormed government buildings in Almaty.
 
Kazakhstan has vast mineral resources, boasting 3% of global oil reserves in addition to significant coal and gas resources. It seems hard to comprehend how the fluctuation of oil prices might be to blame for the deaths of 164 people and the storming of government buildings in what is otherwise a peaceful country.
 
The seed of discontent in this former-Soviet country might actually be attributed to something far more disturbing than petrol costs. Recently, speculation has amassed that the riots were a cover for a power struggle among the country’s ruling elite, after Karim Massimov, Kazahkstan’s former intelligence chief (who was fired by the president last Wednesday) was arrested on suspicion of treason. Allegedly, street protests sparked a struggle between president Tokayev and Massimov and former president Nazarbayev, the country’s first post-Soviet era president and its longest standing. In response, Tokayev called on Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to help restore order. Of the many countries in the alliance including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Mother Russia swiftly obliged by sending paratroopers on a “peacekeeping mission”. Tokayev not only called on a powerful ally to qualm a peaceful protest but sent a powerful message by doing so. At home, he went from being a “mealy-mouthed quiet diplomat” to a leader similar to those exemplified in Soviet Russia, using rhetoric closer to that of a “general leading an army”, according to Kate Mallinson, an associate fellow at Chatham House. To the world, he reinvigorated the country’s relationship with Russia.
 
Hence, the plot thickens. Kazakhstan’s past, present and now future are shaped by its ties to, and reliance on, Russia. In turn, entering a domestic conflict in an ex-Soviet, now foreign, country, is evidence of Russia’s existing and evident tentacular reach in central Asia—with or without NATO’s blessing.