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24 I Companies & Markets bne February 2022
handguns and rifles. The existance of an anti-government militia sounds plausible.
Yet Tokayev’s claims of orchestrating “foreign-trained terrorists” didn’t have any basis until the appearance of the KLF video.
Many questions remain that undermine the authenticity of the video. The biggest problem is this is the first appearance of the group that has played no recorded role in Kazakh politics until now. If KLF are who they say they are, it is also the first documented militia group involved in the unrest. And the Kazakh authorities have released no evidence to back up their claim that international terrorist organisations are involved in the unrest, nor has it named the KLF as one of those groups.
Another red flag is the group’s use of Russian to deliver their message and KLF’s manifesto, published on its Telegram channel, is written in Russian. Although widely spoken, the country’s predominant language is Kazakh. A Kazakh patriotic group would presumably speak in their national language when encouraging violence against a foreign force, or at least have a Kazakh slogan, particularly when they are against what they call “Russian occupation”.
Several Twitter users also highlighted video claiming to show Ukrainian militants threatening terrorist attacks against the Netherlands. The investigative platform Bellingcat proved that the video was fake and likely staged by the Internet Research Agency, an institute infamous for churning out online disinformation and Kremlin propaganda. The video’s setting, timing and rhetoric, which includes the Ukrainian militants claiming to have “guys in the Netherlands ready to obey any order”, undoubtedly parallels KLF’s tone.
Others on social media said the spokesman’s accent is distinctly Ukrainian. A poll of native Russian speaks on Twitter conducted by bne IntelliNews sharing the video found that 40% of the respondents identified a Ukrainian accent, 24% said the accent was Russian, another 25% said there was no discernible accent, but only 10% said the accent was Kazakh.
The group is threatening to take action against the members of the CSTO force. A message sent on the evening of January 7 to the KLF Telegram channel threatens Belarusian CSTO forces. They allegedly know “all movements of the occupation troops on the territory of Kazakhstan, as well as personal data on
the officers”, asking Belarusian commander, Colonel Dmitry Sobol, not to “carry out criminal orders” for his personal safety. They end the message with: “You are on the radar of our informers, and so far we are only watching. You have very little time left.”
In van Linge’s opinion, “a mysterious video where Kazakh insurgents are threatening violence against CSTO forces would be just what Putin and others needed to justify the very same CSTO forces being present in Kazakhstan” he said on his Telegram channel. “Since there are no known anti-government terrorist
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groups in Kazakhstan, the Kremlin needs to fabricate one into existence using a tried and tested propaganda campaign.”
Pro-Kremlin Twitter users latched on to the video and
accused the US of backing the KLF, feeding into the popular disinformation narrative that the West is funding or agitating the protests. One of the Kremlin’s underlying narratives in any revolution or conflict is that Russia is there as a peacekeeper whilst a bellicose West surreptitiously intervenes to expand its sphere of influence.
Even if KLF are successfully proved to be fictitious, the Russian and Kazakh governments, and their supporters, will only denounce the investigation as Western propaganda, as was the case with the Flight MH17 and Skripal investigations. In this sense, the damage is done, and KLF’s video is already enough evidence to back their “foreign-trained terrorist” narrative.
The video continues to be shared online, although no mainstream media organisation has reported on the
militia or its video so far. A few specialist or small media outlets have reported on the story: within the EU, a Cypriot news outlet with around 20,000 Facebook followers, Gegonotstomikroskpio.com, published an article describing KLF as terrorists encouraging “civil war”. The website also promotes disinformation and conspiracy theories often propagated by the Kremlin, including COVID-19 and vaccine scepticism, as well as support for Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.
The story has made a much bigger impact in Russian-language media. Multiple news websites report on KLF with absolute certainty of their existence, although these are still small outlets. The Russian news site The Daily Storm included a quote from Kirill Seymenov, a member of the Moscow think- tank Russian International Affairs Council, who seems to support the legitimacy of KLF: “I think there will be many more organisations. If people have a lot of weapons in their hands, they will of course try to turn into some kind of group.”
Another Russian website, Independent Gazette, stated that the rebels are Ukrainian military and that the voice-over has a Ukrainian accent, which in the Russian media world is a slur, as the Kremlin’s line is that the Maidan revolution in 2014 was orchestrated by far-right Ukrainian nationalists.
The various repoprts muddy the waters, a tactic the Kremlin has used to defang reports it is not happy with. So many versions of the story come out that at the end of the day the public don't know what to believe any more. If it’s revealed that KLF does exist, then legitimate media have a hard job catching up with the baseless conspiracy theories already circulating online.
No credible source has verified the KLF existence so far. Its existence should be taken with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, Russian and Kazakhstan state media are making hay from the release of the video.