The Masimov case (no one talks about): this is how Tokayev returns Kazakhstan to Russia
A plan devised between Putin and Tokayev to remove the ten-year power of the Nazarbayevs and return this piece of former Soviet territory to Russia
Ten days after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the list of logistical and financial losses by Russia is very long. The price that Putin's Russia is paying for this disastrous advance costs its coffers about $ 20 billion a day, not to mention the sanctions that have brought the country to its knees, freezing banks and assets around the world and forcing Moscow to keep the stock market closed for a week now. Putin's reputation permanently lost.
The overall geopolitical framework is that of a multipolar world in which the United States, China and Russia are the major players and major global players .
But let's try to widen the lens and get away from the Ukrainian fire for a moment.
Shortly before the start of the Russian "exercises" on the Ukrainian border, which dates back to about two months ago, on January 2, in Kazakhstan, clashes break out in the square in the city of Almaty, due to expensive crude oil.
Kazakhstan represents the geographical heart of Asia, it is the largest Muslim country in the world, secular and, albeit with glaring defects, formally democratic.
A vast piece of continent that extends from the Caspian Sea to Chinese Xinjiang, rich in gas and oil and crossed by the largest gas transport infrastructures, which connect Kazakhstan itself to Turkmenistan and China.
After three days of clashes in the squares of Almaty, in the night between 5 and 6 January, the head of the Kazakh intelligence, NSC (National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan), Karim Masimov, is removed from his post and arrested. at the behest of the incumbent president Kassim-Jomart Tokayev, with suspicion of high treason, without trial and without precise reasons.
Two months after his arrest, there is total international press silence. The circumstances of the arrest, even reported three days late, are unclear.
Karim Masimov perhaps refused to fire on the protesting crowd, perhaps he wanted to obstruct Tokayev's decision to request the intervention of the Russian armed forces to thwart the alleged terrorist attack.
According to the official version, a handful of terrorists would have tried to subvert the government in office, which, succeeding in restoring order, once the crisis returned, resold to international public opinion a picture of balance and renewed serenity between Tokayev himself and the historian former president Nazarbayev.
The fact remains that several times, in recent times, Tokayev has exposed himself against what he defines as "caste", in reference to the economic and political power held by the Nazarbayev family.
We know well that Masimov was Nursultan Nazarbayev's right-hand man for thirty years. Karim Masimov was Prime Minister twice, oversaw the country's largest financial and infrastructure projects and head of intelligence.
For his part, Nazarbayev has always tried to strengthen the country's identity in order to consolidate its independence from Russia. Thirty years of power capitulated in the hands of Tokayev, who de facto handed the country back to Russia, thus ending up clashing with Nazarbayev and his family, who have the commercial markets of Almaty in their hands.
Tokayev thus first began to obscure Nazarbayev's family, then Nazarbayev himself, expelling him from the security services, then recalled through Putin the weakening of a figure like that of Timur Askaruly Kulibayev – an important oligarch, a member of the Gazprom board and Nazarbayev's son-in-law, who for power, money and ramifications could perhaps have become Nazarbayev's natural successor – thus strengthening his ties with Putin.
From the official bulletins that report the calculation of the damages, from the direct testimonies on the ground, it clearly emerges that the clashes in the squares of Almaty, the city symbol of Nazarbayev's power, were nothing but small-scale assaults, with broken shop windows and clashes with the police, who then fired on the unarmed crowd at the behest of the incumbent President Tokayev himself, who in turn painted the facts as a terrorist danger thwarted thanks to the intervention of the Russian militias, which he himself called.
Everything points to a table plan between Putin and Tokayev to remove the ten-year power of the Nazarbayevs and return this piece of former Soviet territory to Russia.
Kazakhstan thus remains politically linked to Russia, but on the energy front divided between Russia and China. It was Masimov himself who opened the doors and consolidated bridges with China, placing pieces of the country's assets in the hands of this country, but also always managing to keep a certain distance from it.
Kazakhstan is located at the center of an economic and commercial crossroads. If the Silk Road has already gone down, however, some fundamental infrastructural works remain, including the two oil pipelines that have their terminals in China. And that is the hottest Chinese region today, namely Xinjiang, where the genocide of the Uighurs at the hands of the Chinese is taking place, a situation that is out of control from the point of view of international rights.
The departure of such an important protagonist as Masimov, "the mind over matter" of a country that had managed to maintain its independence with great difficulty, authorizes Tokayev to increase dependence on Russia. It was Masimov who supported the protests of the Uyghur communities just below the Chinese embassy and Masimov always favored the political asylum of the Kazakh-Uyghurs fleeing Xinjiang.
China is the most strategic trading partner for Kazakhstan and has recently purchased half of Kazakh gas, thus gaining the primacy over the raw material in the area. The country is thus now squeezed between Russia and China.
To pay the price of this complex geometry is Karim Masimov, a democrat, cosmopolitan, secular, liberal, the only true reformist that the Republic of Kazakhstan has ever known, the scapegoat for that good part of the Kazakh ruling class who consider him a outsider , the foreigner, like Uighur and Tartar.
Thirty years of independence and modernization are thus erased in a country that is now consigned to the obtuseness of a pro-Russian bureaucracy and to which the ground has been collapsing for a week now, due to Putin's nefarious initiative to invade the country. 'Ukraine.
Kazakhstan, where the frictions between Russia and China cooled, today is dismembered and politically at the mercy of a country that is collapsing.
Russia and China, for their part, already behind the scenes of the Winter Olympics, have essentially welded a non-intervention pact, for which on the one hand China has left Putin hands free in Ukraine, on the other Russia closes an eye on Chinese interests.
However, Russia today is on the ground and China could soon play a leading role in averting a further escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, which could lead to a world war.
It is reasonable to assume that this war may soon shift to the Indo-Pacific axis and that a next stage – Taiwan – may become a battleground between China and the United States.
Meanwhile, India does not decide to distance itself from Russia, its major arms supplier, thus complicating the entire geopolitical picture.
If the international community is currently defending Ukraine, it should do the same for a personality like Masimov to be immediately released by the Kazakh authorities.
The post The Masimov case (nobody talks about): this is how Tokayev returns Kazakhstan to Russia appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-caso-masimov-di-cui-nessuno-parla-cosi-tokayev-riconsegna-il-kazakistan-alla-russia/ on Sun, 06 Mar 2022 03:50:00 +0000.