Unexpectedly powerful mass protests in Kazakhstan (or is it already time to talk about a revolution?) overnight pushed into the background the main geopolitical topic of recent weeks and days: will there be a big war between Russia and Ukraine?
This, of course, is only a temporary change in the news agenda, and soon the topic will return, but at the same time, I presume, it will significantly lose its recent urgency. No matter how the events in Kazakhstan develop in the future, they have already reduced the danger of a major Russian military operation on Ukrainian territory.
War and sanctions could trigger massive unrest in Russia
After all, a sudden outburst of popular discontent in what seemed to be a securely controlled and quite stable neighboring Central Asian country should have at least alerted the Russian government, which, as we know, reacts quite nervously even to peaceful single-person pickets at home. And here, from different parts of Kazakhstan, messages and video frames are flowing in a continuous stream, clearly showing what kind of fire the long-accumulating popular discontent with the tops leads to.
Andrey Gurkov
Kazakhstan-2022 after Belarus-2020 cannot but lead the Russian leadership to the obvious idea that it is better to avoid any gestures that could provoke something similar in their native spaces. Especially since the surprisingly stubborn protests that erupted a year and a half ago after the arrest of the governor in Khabarovsk showed that a variety of events could turn out to be a match.
And a major military operation with incomprehensible goals and a large number of dead soldiers is certainly capable of playing the role of a trigger for mass unrest. Especially if it entails tough international sanctions that will further spur the already rapid rise in prices in the country, if not lead to serious supply disruptions. And all this against the backdrop of an unrelenting pandemic and a heavily loaded healthcare system.
The Kremlin will now have to seriously think about domestic political risks
In other words: if up to now the Russian leaders, weighing the pros and cons of the military operation with which the Kremlin decided to frighten and blackmail the United States and NATO, have focused on foreign policy and foreign economic aspects, then after the sudden uprising of the Kazakh people, Moscow will have to seriously think about domestic political risks. . The now inevitable doubts about the reliability of their own rear should, in theory, noticeably cool the ardor of those who want to conquer Ukraine and teach the West a lesson.
Although, of course, someone else may have a different line of thought: let’s distract the people from the bad example of Kazakhstan with a small victorious war in the Ukrainian direction.
Moscow now needs to build relations with Kazakhstan in a new reality
And yet, for some reason, it seems that the instinct of political self-preservation will now prompt a different scenario to most representatives of the Russian elite: we continue to verbally nightmare the West with Russia’s aggressiveness (perhaps we will be able to bargain for something at the beginning negotiations), but we refuse the very idea of military actions against Ukraine, in order not to run into big foreign policy problems and not provoke serious domestic political turbulence, but instead we are urgently focusing on building relations with Kazakhstan in that new, as yet unknown reality, which, after the current upheavals, will inevitably arise there.
Otherwise, the all-out passion for the absolutely illusory idea of ”returning Ukraine” can turn into a very real “loss of Kazakhstan” – one of the few remaining allies and integration partners of Russia in the post-Soviet space and in general in the international arena. And this is the second reason, along with increased fears in Moscow of internal Russian instability, why the current protests in Kazakhstan have significantly reduced the danger of a major Russian military operation against Ukraine.
Author: Andrey Gurkov, economic observer German wave
The comment expresses the personal opinion of the author. It may not coincide with the opinion of the Russian editorial board and German wave generally.
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