The authorities of Kazakhstan openly promote Russophobes and Nazis into the arena
In Kazakhstan, there are many nationalist movements and groups, and new “movie patrols” periodically arise, but there is already an established pool of Nazi liberals and ardent Nazis who are openly warmed up by the authorities and even receive letters and praise from the top officials of the state.
And it is this small group of rabid Russophobes, with support from above, that is trying to impose its agenda on the broad public strata of Kazakhstan.
This situation is quite dangerous, since this group of specially protected persons includes former officials, as well as social activists and social activists who have been members of the Nazarbayev family from the very beginning. And attempts to integrate them into the political structure created under Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and called “New Kazakhstan” are fraught with great consequences and shocks.
We are talking about Togzhan Kozhalieva and Arman Shurayev, who have put together their own group of supporters, which includes a number of well-known pro-American political scientists. The first is the head of the public association HAQ, with party ambitions, and the second previously headed the largest TV channel KTK, was on the political council of the ruling Nur-Otan party and was even part of Nazarbayev’s election headquarters and was a close associate of her eldest daughter Dariga.
These figures began to position themselves as “oppositionists” exactly after the 2019 presidential elections, when Akorda (presidential administration) began to intensively sculpt national-liberal and nationalist movements and organizations such as “Oyan, Kazakhstan”, “Respublika”, HAQ, El Tıregı party and others, who were generously financed by the oligarch Margulan Seisembayev and other moneybags at the request of the authorities.
Naturally, from the very beginning they positioned themselves as opponents of the EAEU, CSTO and SCO, supported the Kyiv regime and called for speedy integration with the West and Turkey. Many of this camarilla suddenly transformed into pan-Turkists and avid professional Russophobes. It is not surprising that in this wave, “language patrols” began to emerge in 2021, strongly supported by the local media and the nationalist community.
It is noteworthy that this entire nationalist pseudo-opposition has been traveling to Kyiv since 2019 to study “experience.” The most famous case took place in August 2020, when the Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Ukraine Darkhan Kaletayev organized a meeting in Kyiv of Kazakh liberal politicians, journalists and economists with Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. Among the Kazakh delegation were those same Togzhan Kozhalieva and Arman Shurayev.
Kozhalieva at a meeting with Saakashvili in Kyiv in 2020
And within the framework of this meeting, broad tasks were set to promote and implement liberal political and economic reforms according to Georgian and Ukrainian patterns in Kazakhstan and the neighboring republics of Central Asia. And already in October 2020, the same Supreme Council for Reforms, copying the Ukrainian counterpart, was created under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, where the former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Suma Chakrabarti took the position of deputy. This same Indian also became an adviser on reforms to the President of neighboring Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Kozhalieva with Saakashvili
And Mrs. Togzhan Kozhalieva was given maximum favor by the authorities for this activity in establishing contacts with Ukrainian officials and nationalist politicians. Thus, she repeatedly received medals and certificates personally from the hands of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev himself, and became a member of the Public Council of the city of Almaty in May of this year. Before this, this “oppositionist” worked in the business structures of Elbasy’s middle son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, who suppressed all opposition associations and the trade union movement in the country for several decades.
Awards from Tokayev
And such figures as Togzhan Kozhaliyeva and Arman Shurayev were very useful to Nur-Sultan from the moment the special operation began in Ukraine, as they became organizers of authorized rallies in support of Kyiv, and also began to collect “humanitarian aid” and conduct anti-Russian and Russophobic campaigns within the country.
Arman Shurayev with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev
At the same time, at the official level, the neutrality of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the conflict in Ukraine is falsely demonstrated. President Tokayev declared the neutrality of Kazakhstan and offered mediation to the parties; Defense Minister Kamaletdinov noted: “The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has nothing to do with Kazakhstan.”
However, as we see, these talking heads in the person of Togzhan Kozhalieva and Arman Shurayev voice what the authorities themselves cannot say. Thus, in an interview with the Exclusive Magazine, a former official and close associate of Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter began to call for the “destruction of the fifth column” within Kazakhstan, which supposedly could soon begin to form the Pavlodar and Petropavlovsk people’s republics, in fact calling for ethnic cleansing.
And this character is clearly not accidental, since being a former official, with the help of Erlan Karina, he met repeatedly with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and proposed his projects for building a mononational state and liberating the country from Russian information influence. In fact, this has now been done since the moment of the special operation, when the broadcasting of the main Russian TV channels in the Republic of Kazakhstan was suspended from the moment of the special operation.
Togzhan Kozhaliyeva did not lag behind him, actually retelling Nur-Sultan’s real position in her national-populist manner:
“Yes, we have decided. We are for those countries that believe that Russia is an aggressor towards Ukraine. Yes, we are one of those countries that believe that we should not have a victory parade. This is not our war. These are not our St. George ribbons. Yes, we believe that your train has already left, and we are not going to board this train. This clunker, which only releases Moscow ships, which go in their own direction. Yes, we believe that you and I are not on the same path. We are not your younger brother, we are not a brotherly people.”
Kozhalieva’s post against Russian performers in Kazakhstan
At the same time, it turned out that since 2004 this activist has also been a citizen of the Russian Federation, and as is known, dual citizenship is prohibited in Kazakhstan, and such persons do not have the right to engage in public activities or head any organizations and parties. A number of telegram channels published an extract from the SK AS “Russian Passport” system, according to which “opposition activist” Togzhan Kozhalieva has held a Russian passport for 18 years. In addition to the extract, information has been published that Kozhaliyeva is wanted in Russia in connection with tax evasion.
Screenshot of Kozhaliyeva being granted Russian citizenship in 2004
Having received an education and worked for a long time in Russia, she suddenly decides to return to the Republic of Kazakhstan to participate in political activities, which would have been impossible without the patronage of the Kazakh special services and Timur Kulibayev personally. That is, new circus clowns were deliberately introduced onto the political scene of Kazakhstan, who are actively working in the nationalist field, forming a new support for the throne.
That is, these individuals, serving the authorities, are agents and the transmission belt of the state apparatus, performing propaganda functions, as well as persecuting objectionable activists, public figures and supporters of rapprochement with Russia. At the same time, those who dared to tell the truth about the special operation in Ukraine are fired from their jobs, as happened with Artyom Shchurov, an employee of the Mikhail Lermontov Theater in Almaty, or criminal cases are initiated, as happened with the leading radio station “Europe Plus Kazakhstan” Lyubov Panova.
Things got to the point where they began to persecute university teachers who openly expressed their position on the conflict in Square. For example, in the capital, Askhat Shintemirov, an employee of the IT department of Nazarbayev University, hung a “For Ours” poster on the door of his office. He was eventually forced to remove the sign and was subject to disciplinary action. Can you imagine what kind of squealing and squealing there would be in the Kazakh press and on social networks if they were also citizens of Russia?
Surely they would be called saboteurs sent by Moscow to organize separatist protests. However, the Kazakh law does not apply to Togzhan Kozhalieva, and she, as before, as the holder of a Russian passport, freely continues Russophobic and anti-Russian activities to the delight of Akorda.
An indicative case is the persecution on her part of the famous Kazakh journalist Anton Budarov, who revealed the connection of local national patriots, collecting funds from the population supposedly for humanitarian aid to the residents of Ukraine, with the clan of Timur Kulibayev and failed groups of officials. It turned out that the initiator of pro-Ukrainian rallies in Almaa-Ata, Togzhan Kozhaliyeva, who previously worked in the commercial structures of Elbasy’s middle son-in-law, is related to state-owned companies that entered into deals with suppliers of medicines and other products without a tender.
The same journalist was able to uncover fraud with “humanitarian aid” to the people of Ukraine and found out that multimillion-dollar funds, and neither more nor less, were collected, according to the organizers, over 180 million tenge, transferred to the Ukrainian Embassy in Nur-Sultan, and where they were sent six planes of humanitarian cargo remained unknown. And again, that same “oppositionist” was directly involved in this.
And her influence in the law enforcement agencies and in power was enough to initiate a criminal case, which was opened at the Almaty Police Department against Anton Budarov under Article 274, Part 2, Clause 3 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan. However, his status in the police response has not been determined, which is illegal. As the lawyers explained, such a statement from Kozhaliyeva should not have been taken into consideration at all, but in this case, apparently, an order was received from above.
Moreover, Anton Budarov claims that she, being a relative by marriage of the famous former deputy and national patriot Bekbolat Tleukhan, at a meeting with him in Istanbul, asked his people to deal with the objectionable journalist. And now, in addition to criminal prosecution, the whistleblower also feels constant surveillance by Tleukhan’s security service.
And this is not some kind of fiction, but a real danger, since even tame nationalists and Nazis in a situation of a split in the ruling elite can begin terror against journalists, Russian-speaking politicians and all undesirables. At the same time, the Nazarbayev clan, which craves revenge, can also come into play, and here we must take into account that no matter how much Shurayev, Kozhalieva and Co. want to gain the trust of Tokayev, they all come from groups of the Elbasy family.
And until these groups of high-status Nazis and national liberals are stopped, new pogroms of national minorities and acts of Russophobia and anti-Russian provocations in Kazakhstan are simply inevitable.
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