Page 57 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

bne February 2022 Kazakhstan I Special focus I 57
Mukhtar Ablyazov.
Fugitive banker Ablyazov lays claim to filling opposition vacuum in Kazakhstan as president says forces will shoot-to-kill
geopolitical play, unless the West entered the fray then Russia – which at the invitation of Tokayev has sent troops to help restore order in Kazakhstan – would bring the Central Asian republic to heel in a type of restored Soviet Union.
"If [the West does] not [act] then Kazakhstan will turn into Belarus and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will methodically impose his programme: the recreation of a structure like the Soviet Union," Ablyazov – who in 2016 faced an extradition request from Russia that was blocked by France’s highest administrative authority as politically motivated – was quoted as saying.
In further remarks reported by AFP, Ablyazov insisted that the regime that has ruled Kazakhstan since the fall of the Soviet Union is nearing its end in
a popular revolution. The Russian-led military intervention of five ex-Soviet states requested by Tokayev to help deal with Kazakhstan’s crisis amounted to an “occupation”, he said, and the West should consider sanctions against the Kazakh leadership, with the Kazakh elite known to have “lots of assets” in European capitals like Paris and London.
"I am urging people to organise strikes and block roads to protest their [Russian and other foreign troops] presence in the country," he was also cited as saying, adding: "The more Putin intervenes,
the more Kazakhstan will become like Ukraine – an enemy state for Russia."
Tokayev, meanwhile, was in no mood for compromise. Promising the crackdown on the protests would continue, he
said: “Abroad there are calls for the
two sides to hold negotiations for a peaceful resolution. What idiocy. What kind of negotiations can you have with criminals? We were dealing with armed and well-prepared bandits, both local and foreign. Bandits and terrorists, who should be destroyed. This will happen in the nearest time.”
No evidence
A problem for Tokayev and Putin is that the troops arriving in Kazakhstan under the Moscow-led Collective Security
bne IntelIiNews
Kazakhstan’s authoritarian President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on January 7 stepped up his efforts to delegitimise the protests that have this week swept the country by reasserting that they have been organised and driven by foreign-backed “criminals”, “bandits” and “terrorists”. He has instructed the country's security forces to “use lethal force without warning”.
Such has been the lack of democracy
in the Central Asian nation throughout its three-decade-long post-Soviet independence that no substantial organised political parties or movements of opposition have taken shape, meaning the many thousands who have come out on the streets during the unrest have lacked leadership and direction. January 7 thus brought another interesting development when self-exiled France- based Mukhtar Ablyazov stepped forward and attempted to fill the vacuum of opposition.
Ablyazov, however, is a hugely controversial figure. A former Kazakh energy minister, he headed one of Kazakhstan’s largest banks, BTA Bank, from 2005 to 2009 and, with refugee status in France, leads the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (QDT) party
– banned in his homeland – but at
the same time he is a fugitive whom Kazakhstan has tried and sentenced in absentia for murder and embezzlement.
In interviews with news agencies, Ablyazov nevertheless made his case, telling AFP: "The temporary government that ousts the regime of Nursultan Nazarbayev [the former Kazakh president who ruled from 1990 until Tokayev took over in 2019] will be
led by me for half a year ahead of free elections."
'Restored Soviet Union'
Speaking to Reuters, Ablyazov warned that while Kazakhstan was now in
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