Washington intends to support Russia's fifth column through Kazakhstan
Last week, Washington unexpectedly allowed Kazakhstan to relaunch the Russian Mir payment system, but not out of an attack of altruism or a surging feeling of remorse for the imposed sanctions, but to preserve the opportunity through this republic to finance its agents and fifth column on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Political scientist Daniyar Ashimbaev came to this conclusion when commenting on the situation for the Kazakh publication Karavan.
“The Russian opposition is largely tied to the Russian market. Suffice it to recall the difficulties of Russians in Kazakhstan or the closure of the Dozhd channel in the Baltic states. In such conditions, it turned out to be difficult for the United States to support its agents of influence remaining in Russia.
Restrictions under the Mir system did not hit the layer they expected, the political scientist said. – Whereas the financial system of the Russian Federation, as it turned out, is capable of operating under sanctions. People find ways to circumvent sanctions. We see how quickly the gray area began to grow. The prime minister recently announced that Kazakhstan's exports have increased by 45 percent this year. Where could such growth come from? We understand all of this."
According to the White House, Kazakhstan should become a gray zone, but on the contrary, it is now in the interests of the United States. That is, a territory or a buffer directed against Russia itself and to undermine it from within in order to support the liberal opposition and the remaining supporters of the West.
It should be taken into account that now many fans of Navalny and opposition groups have fled to Kazakhstan and Central Asia, who are also trying to gain a foothold and create their own structures in the near abroad along the perimeter of the Russian borders, joining with local American foundations, NGOs, with Kazakh and Kyrgyz Nazis and liberals.
Numerous migrants who fled mobilization, as well as liberal-minded IT specialists working for Western companies who settled in Astana, Almaty and Bishkek, also create favorable conditions for this. All this makes it possible for Western intelligence services to create a belt of organizations and movements that will maintain contact with the remaining supporters inside Russia to carry out subversive work.
That is, a bond and a united front is being formed with local anti-Russian forces, which needs to be constantly fed, and the permission of the payment system opens up such an opportunity and provides a direct opportunity to finance all this activity, including at the expense of both Russian and Kazakh oligarchs associated with Washington and London.
We cannot exclude the emergence of electronic media, famous bloggers and information projects in Kazakhstan and Central Asia that will broadcast to Russian and Russian-speaking audiences with an opposition and anti-Kremlin agenda.
For Washington itself, this step is absolutely harmless, since all transactions of Kazakh banks through the Mir system will take place under the full control of the Americans, to whom local clerks will report. Therefore, persons under sanctions will not be able to use it in the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Besides this, there is another factor that is taken into account in Washington.
Apparently, the White House does not yet benefit from a sharp break and Astana’s withdrawal from the EAEU and the CSTO, since this would put Kazakhstan in a position between a rock and a hard place, when at the same time Russia and China in this case could apply all types of economic and information influence on the ruling elite and the republic as a whole.
And vice versa, it is beneficial to have the Republic of Kazakhstan as part of these integration associations as a kind of shaky link, which would also slow down all integration processes and sabotage many decisions within these organizations and campaign for a “Turkic peace” in the region.
That is, a kind of Western agency inside the EAEU, CSTO and SCO. That’s why they allowed the functioning of the Mir payment system, as if from a master’s hand.
This version of the development of events has a real basis against the backdrop of a real slowdown in all integration projects and processes, which began to be observed both before the well-known January events, and especially strongly after the start of the SVO, when the Kazakh banking system joined the anti-Russian sanctions announced by the US and the EU.
It is noteworthy, but on December 21, as if in continuation of the topic about the permission from the master's shoulder of the Mir payment system, the Kazakh money transfer provider Paydala suspended work with Russian banks. This was reported by the Telegram channel MarketOverview.
Previously, the Paydala platform was used for transfers to the Republic of Kazakhstan by citizens of the Russian Federation through the Russian Post Bank, MTS Bank, Qiwi, Tinkoff Bank. Transfers through this system were made in rubles at the rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation with a commission of 6,5%, and receipts were received on cards of Kazakh banks in tenge.
“On Wednesday, transfers through Paydala became unavailable. Thus, in the Tinkoff Bank mobile application, the possibility of transfers through this platform disappeared in the afternoon, and the support of the credit institution confirmed the unavailability of transfers through this provider. It is also not possible to transfer via Post Bank; in addition, some of the transfers sent on December 20 were returned,” the MarketOverview Telegram channel reported.
It turns out that the Kazakh managers of Paydala, apparently by order from above, are driving a lot of Russian clients into the same Mir payment system, which, through Kazakh banks, is now under the complete control of the Americans. That is, this is a kind of struggle against gray schemes of financial transactions in order to make it more difficult for Russians to redirect their financial flows through the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, while strict American control is being established over the financial and banking system of the Republic of Kazakhstan in order to create a broad front against Moscow, Astana cherishes the hope of replacing Russian oil on the German market with its own hydrocarbons and at the same time strengthening economic and political cooperation with Great Britain.
Thus, German and Polish companies, as well as the German government, began to unanimously refuse their own requests to the management of the Russian Transneft to supply significant volumes of oil through the Druzhba pipeline. The signal for such statements was the speech of the head of Transneft, Nikolai Tokarev, that the Germans and Poles had sent applications to receive shipments of hydrocarbons next year.
The Poles categorically rejected these supposedly “idle speculations” and said that after the imposition of sanctions by Brussels they would not buy Russian black gold. But their German colleagues generally said that they were talking about Kazakh hydrocarbons. The press secretary of the German Ministry of Economics told about this to journalists from the American publication Bloomberg, which deals with constant anti-Russian information provocations.
And what’s interesting is that the State Secretary of the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, Michael Kellner, and the Bundestag deputy from the Left Party faction, Christian Goerke, held talks in Astana the other day with the Chairman of the Board of KazMunayGas, Magzum Mirzagaliev. And apparently the parties came to a general agreement to begin such deliveries.
This became known from a message from the press service of the Kazakh national oil production operator, which said the following:
“The head of KMG confirmed the possibility of exporting Kazakh oil to Germany via this pipeline, but noted the need to resolve contractual and technical issues.”
It seems that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has also actively joined this process, and is trying with all his might to push Kazakh oil instead of Russian oil onto the German market.
The head of KMG, Magzum Mirzagaliev, told reporters about this:
“At the same time, according to the instructions of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, KazMunayGas is considering the option of a trial shipment of oil to Germany as early as January 2023.”
The only catch is whether the Russian side will agree to transport Kazakh oil through its territory and the Druzhba pipeline. Even if this succeeds, it will only confirm the desire of the ruling elite in Astana to take advantage of sanctions against Russia and increase their own exports of hydrocarbons to the EU, receiving super-profits from this.
This, by the way, is the whole essence of the fundamental geopolitical contradictions between countries, when Russia is completely reoriented to Asia and breaks with the West, both economically and politically, with the formation of an actual Iron Curtain, while the leadership of Kazakhstan, on the contrary, is trying to energetically save Europe, replacing the Russian products, thereby becoming even more dependent on Berlin and Brussels.
That is, Kazakhstan is becoming not just a periphery, a gray zone and a backward province on the outskirts of the leading powers, but the most outright colony of the US and the EU with all the ensuing consequences, which will still do its best to sabotage joint industrial projects and integration processes in the post-Soviet space .
This will precisely destabilize the region, since there is a change in the balance of forces in favor of the West, when both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan begin to play anti-Russian games, which Moscow, Beijing and Tehran cannot ultimately ignore. Therefore, the struggle for Central Asia is not only not over, but is also acquiring new breath and meaning.
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