The Almaty airport was seized so that militants who arrived under the guise of guest workers could freely enter the city. This was stated by the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in an interview with Khabar 24.
“Now the investigation shows that the airport was seized in order to ensure the passage through it of citizens who arrived from one Central Asian city. These were trained militants, who, of course, flew in under the guise of guest workers, they were led through the border posts, launched into the city and began to lead the operation,” Tokayev said.
According to Tokayev, the people who caused the riots in Kazakhstan were not interested in material values, but in criminal cases and dossiers on law enforcement officers. The head of Kazakhstan called the January events “a carefully planned terrorist action in its essence with the involvement of militants from abroad.”
Mass protests erupted on January 2 in western Kazakhstan over a sharp increase in the price of liquefied gas for cars. In the following days, they spread to other regions of the country. The situation was especially difficult in Alma-Ata, where demonstrators attacked police and military personnel, vandalized a number of administrative buildings, shopping centers, shops and banks, and briefly seized the airport building.
Tokayev called the protesters terrorists and announced an attempted coup. On the night of January 6, it became known about the decision of the CSTO Council to send a peacekeeping contingent to Kazakhstan, which guarded a number of strategic facilities. The state of emergency was lifted throughout the country on January 19, on the same day the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan reported that all foreign military personnel had been withdrawn from the republic. According to the authorities, as a result of the riots, 225 people were killed, including 19 security officials, and more than 4,500 were injured.
On January 26, the regime of the anti-terrorist operation was introduced on the territory of the Turksib district of Alma-Ata, the special services detained five leaders and members of an organized criminal group who participated in the attack on state institutions and commercial facilities of the city from January 4 to 6 during the riots, the operational headquarters for combating terrorism reported. .