Kazakh president-for-life Nursultan Nazarbayev had reportedly hoped that by bringing Russia closer as an economic partner, he would successfully snuff out any desire from Moscow to re-annex the vast state as reclaimed Russian territory.
It doesn’t appear as if that’s a gamble likely to pay off, if comments from Vladimir Putin last week at a youth forum in Russia are any indication.
Fielding a question from a participant at the 10th Seliger 2014 Youth Forum about rising nationalism in Ukraine and a possible increase in nationalism in Kazakhstan, Putin called into question Kazakhstan’s very legitimacy as a state.
“Nazarbayev is a prudent leader, even the most prudent in the post-Soviet state,” the Russian leader said, according to comments reported by Kazakh news outlet Tengrinews on Aug. 30.
“He has done a unique thing. He created a state in a territory that never had a state before,” Putin continued.
“The Kazakhs had no statehood. From this perspective, he is a unique figure both in the post-Soviet space and in Kazakhstan.”
In a political climate in which analysts openly struggle over how to understand Putin and his actions – with Western op-ed pages wondering whether the Russian leader is a madman who has no capacity to respond to threats, pressure or sanctions, or whether he is a brilliant, calculating leviathan carefully coordinating his every step to increase Russian territory – this latest statement on Kazakhstan is a cause for concern, especially in light of the currently underway invasion-by-any-other-name of Ukraine.
Putin’s justification of this latest military campaign in Ukraine – which the United States and EU are loathe to term an invasion, as calling it such would require that they actually do something about it – had even flimsier justifications.
In early March, Putin pointed to the wave of ‘uncontrolled crime’ in the eastern and southern regions of the country, and said it was his duty to protect Ukrainians, and especially Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
Putin would not have to work very hard to adapt this rationale to justify an attempted annexation of a slice of Kazakhstan.
