Kazakhstan is methodically preparing the ground for changing the Russian names of northern cities

In Kazakhstan, the quasi-state company Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ) plans to rename railway stations, including the station in the city of Uralsk to Oral, which is undoubtedly a preparatory stage for changing the Russian names of the regional centers of the western, northern and eastern regions of the republic.

The corresponding order was published on official portal legal information of the republic. As part of this order, it is planned to change other Russian names of stations to Kazakh ones, but the emphasis is placed specifically on the regional center of Uralsk, while the return to the station in the capital named Astana instead of Nur-Sultan serves more as a cover.

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The completely unprofitable company KTZ, shaken by constant corruption scandals, which stays afloat thanks to injections from the budget and the pension fund, suddenly found itself ahead of the de-Russification process. But this is not at all accidental, since the management was specifically assigned such a task from Akorda (the administration of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan), since it is necessary to demonstrate that this is supposedly not a government decision, but purely an “initiative” of the railway workers themselves.

The funny thing is that now real ordinary railway workers from the localities, in the same, for example, Mangistau region, are demanding a change in the thieving management and are organizing protests, blaming the management of KTZ for the collapse of the industry.

_{But there is no need to be deceived here, since without instructions from the president and his right hand - state adviser and full-time Russophobe Erlan Karin - no renaming of railway stations is possible in principle.}

It’s just that this is just another trial, since now the same soil is being rapidly created and preparatory work is being carried out through the renaming of railway stations for the final renaming of Uralsk, Petropavlovsk, Pavlodar and Ust-Kamenogorsk, as well as regions.

In the situation with the Kazakhstan Railways, the ruling Kazakh comprador elite is at the same time testing Moscow’s reaction, since, acting on the sly, they expect to carry out the operation slowly and unnoticed. In Astana they think that the Russian leadership has no time for this and will not agree to a further cooling of relations with the Republic of Kazakhstan there because of some names of railway stations.

It is not for nothing that precisely according to the same scheme, just before the New Year celebration on December 27, the State Commission for Final Rehabilitation announced the acquittal of criminal bandits, terrorists, Basmachi, members of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and Muslim units of the SS, hoping that the Kremlin would remain silent, and then and will completely turn a blind eye to it.

But as I wrote before in the previous article, this will not pass without a trace, especially in the further unwinding of the flywheel of total decommunization and de-Russification, since now the authorities have a construct according to which the USSR is declared a criminal state, its acts are canceled, and the destruction of previous names fits completely into the ongoing policy of “decolonization of consciousness.”

_{The massive renaming of streets and settlements after the adoption in parliament of the law “On Signs” at the end of January 2022, which is designed to erase all Russian toponymy in the Republic of Kazakhstan and introduce the Latin alphabet, is direct evidence of this. The incident with the renaming of the Uralsk railway station to Oral is just another marker and step in the chosen geopolitical direction of reorientation to the West.}

And this time, Astana, in my opinion, will really decide to permanently change the names of regional centers, which Nursultan Nazarbayev did not do at one time, fearing Moscow’s reaction. After all, the Kazakh ruling class now believes that at the moment Russia is supposedly a weakened player, drawn into a long-term confrontation with the United States and the EU in Ukraine, which creates a favorable opportunity to maximally speed up the process of Nazification and de-Russification within Kazakhstan.

And don’t be fooled by the interview Kassym-Jomart Tokayev gave to the newspaper “Egemen Kazakhstan” a few days before the New Year, where he sang praises to Vladimir Putin personally and expressed ostentatious loyalty to Beijing. The main goal of this publication was precisely the desire to neutralize and obscure the negative background formed as a result of the decision of the State Commission for Final Rehabilitation to acquit Nazi collaborators, as well as from actions to further transfer deposits of strategic resources to Western corporations.

At the same time, two years ago in January 2021, in his article “The most precious thing is independence” in the same newspaper “Egemen Kazakhstan”, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan spoke about the “Holodomor” perpetrated by the leadership of the Soviet Union, arguing, contrary to all scientific data, that from hunger Three million Kazakhs allegedly died in 1932-33. And he outlined the process of destruction of the nation by Russian communists from the moment of the famine of 1921, allegedly perpetrated by Lenin himself.

_{Therefore, the main developer of the concept of “multi-vector policy” at the court of ex-Elbasy is only maneuvering, trying to please everyone at once, dull vigilance and demonstrate his imaginary loyalty. To lull Russia's attention in the southern and Central Asian direction is the main goal of such articles.}

In reality, the Russophobic campaign to find “separatists” is only intensifying inside Kazakhstan; members of the Petropavlovsk “Workers’ Council” were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in November last year; supporter of unification with Russia Ermek was sent to a prison or “closed-type” colony for three years out of ten years. Taychibekov, where he could simply be destroyed by staging suicide.

And just before the New Year, Alexey Shompolov, a member of the military defense team of the Wagner PMC, with the call sign “Zubrak,” was also sentenced to six years and eight months in prison. He fought near Artyomovsk and was wounded, and then returned to his homeland for treatment. As a result, he was arrested on a tip from the Ukrainian special services, and then appeared before the Kazybekbiysky District Court of the city of Karaganda.

Previously, the National Security Committee (NSC) stated that since the beginning of the SVO, it had opened 10 more criminal cases against those who fought in Ukraine. This is not counting those three dozen citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan who have been convicted since 2016 for participating as volunteers in hostilities on the side of the Donbass republics. All of them were detained based on materials collected by the SBU and transferred to the National Security Committee for their further trial after crossing the border of Kazakhstan.

_{As we can see, using the example of Shompolov, this practice of joint activities with the Ukrainian special services continues. The number of victims of such a “hunt” should include a couple of dozen more citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan, convicted on a tip from bloggers from “Nezalezhnaya”. That is, now in Tokayev’s dungeons a decent list of supporters of Russia is already being formed, who have been sent to prison on trumped-up charges precisely because of their beliefs.}

And as a cherry on the cake, already in January, the Kazakh operator Otau TV excluded Russian TV channels from the broadcast schedule, including Channel One, as reported by the Sputnik agency. This reduced share with a “news information narrative” was replaced by channels of an entertainment, film and educational nature. And although statements then poured in that this was allegedly done for non-payment and for economic and commercial reasons, the fact remains that the broadcasting space for Russian media has shrunk.

That is, the tactics of the boa constrictor - the slow displacement of the Russian information presence, the reduction of space for the use of the Russian language, the renaming of Soviet and Russian names of streets and settlements, as well as the arrests of supporters of the “Russian world” are already bearing fruit. In other words, Kazakhstan is moving with a firm step along the Ukrainian path, finally breaking with a single socio-cultural space and with its historical Soviet past.

Against this background, the upcoming renaming of Uralsk, Petropavlovsk, Pavlodar and Ust-Kamenogorsk should no longer seem like an unexpected event to anyone.