Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko held a telephone conversation with Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan Maulen Ashimbaev. This was reported by the press service of the Federation Council speaker on January 6.
Matvienko expressed sympathy and support to Ashimbaev, and also expressed concern about the scale of illegal actions of armed extremists, which threaten not only the integrity and sovereignty of Kazakhstan, the lives of its citizens, but also the security of neighboring states.
“In this regard, the Speaker of the Federation Council highly appreciated the confident and consistent actions of the leadership of the Republic to restore law and order, as well as the timely appeal to the CSTO to attract the peacekeeping forces of the Organization to preserve public peace and stability,” the message says.
Matviyenko expressed confidence that in the shortest possible time the authorities of Kazakhstan, with the support of the CSTO forces, will restore the rule of law, life will be normalized, and the criminals will be punished.
Separately, the speaker of the Federation Council expressed condolences to the families of the deceased law enforcement officers and wished the victims a speedy recovery.
On January 2, protests began in Kazakhstan. Residents of cities, dissatisfied with the rise in the cost of liquefied gas, came to the rallies. Fuel has risen in price from 60 tenge (10 rubles) to 120 (20 rubles) per liter. The authorities set up a government commission and promised to cut prices.
The situation was especially aggravated in Alma-Ata: protesters broke into the administration building, set fire to the building of the prosecutor’s office and the office of the ruling party. In addition, the Almaty residence of the President of Kazakhstan was seized.
The President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, said that the buildings and infrastructure facilities, the premises where the weapons are located, are captured by terrorist groups, they, according to him, are fighting with the cadets of the schools. He noted that the bandits who caused the riots had received serious training abroad.
The government of Kazakhstan resigned on January 5.
On the night of January 6, the riots in Almaty did not subside. Thus, radical protesters armed themselves and began to loot, destroying shops, pharmacies and banks. There were reports of shootings between the military and protesters in the city. It also became known about the security forces killed in Alma-Ata. Later it was reported that their number had grown to 13, two of them were beheaded.
The brutal actions of the attackers, as the city’s commandant’s office are convinced, testifies to the terrorist and extremist nature of the bandit formations that attacked Alma-Ata.
According to the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan, as a result of the riots in the country, more than a thousand people were injured, of which almost 400 were hospitalized, 62 are in intensive care. At the same time, the department emphasized that the participants in the riots attack doctors, more than 10 doctors were injured.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who holds the post of chairman of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), noted that in connection with Tokayev’s appeal and in view of the threat to national security and the sovereignty of Kazakhstan caused, among other things, by outside interference, the Organization’s Collective Security Council decided to send collective peacekeeping forces for a limited time period with the aim of stabilizing and normalizing the situation in this country.
According to the CSTO secretariat, the Russian part of the peacekeeping contingent is being transferred to Kazakhstan by military transport aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces. It is noted that the advanced units from its composition have already begun to fulfill the assigned tasks. It also became known that Belarus will send peacekeepers to Kazakhstan to fulfill allied obligations.