Ukraine and Kazakhstan, two crises for Putin

Although the Kazakh government has shut down the country’s Internet, the shocking news of bloodshed and chaos has not stopped. Dozens, if not hundreds, of government buildings are dead, the regime is struggling to survive, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing another crisis. The West must now use Putin’s new problem to prevent it from provoking another crisis in Ukraine.

The Russian president has, of course, declared that he will impose Russian control on all former Soviet territories, including Kazakhstan. Putin has said the country is an artificial creation of former Prime Minister and President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled it for three decades in a dictatorial fashion, imitating Putin’s model. Nazarbayev, 81, has now lost control of the situation, prompting Putin to intervene directly.

“This is an unprecedented scenario, where a government that appears to be strong and stable is calling on the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to intervene,” said Erika Marat, a professor at National Defense University. “Kazakhstan is handing over its national sovereignty to a Russian-led military force, it is unthinkable.”

Marat points out that the causes of the crisis in Kazakhstan are internal and have their roots in decades of social inequality, corruption, poverty and government incompetence. The issue is not Putin, but the rupture of the social contract between the people and the regime.

But now that Putin and Nazarbayev have turned the Kazakhstan domestic crisis into a geopolitical event, it is impossible to ignore the implications for US-Russian relations, which are experiencing a crisis due to the events in Ukraine. The mobilization of 100,000 Russian troops on the border with Ukraine was aimed at drawing the West into negotiations over unreasonable Russian demands such as the withdrawal of NATO from the border in 1997. So far this has paid off: next week talks will be held in Geneva.

Putin did not know, however, that Almaty would catch fire just as US and Russian officials begin talks on Ukraine. The Russian president may be forced to send troops to Kazakhstan currently stationed on the border with Ukraine. His calculations are changing, the risk of invasion of Ukraine is being removed.

“The unrest in Kazakhstan raises a question for Putin: must he continue his campaign of intimidation to the west or face the dangers to the south? Can he do both?” asks former ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan John Herbst. “At the moment, Putin is trying to have both the whole pie and the dog full.”

The West must take advantage of this problem to ensure that Putin does not hold Ukraine hostage while controlling Kazakhstan militarily. Of course, no one is proposing that the US invade Kazakhstan, which would confirm President Tokayev’s absurd claim that the protesters are instigated by the West. What needs to be done is to support Ukraine militarily and diplomatically, in order to convince Putin that any invasion of the country would be disastrous for him.

Putin is an opportunist, but also a realist. If an old dictator cannot be kept in power, this is a bad precedent for him as well. He may have no choice but to take Kazakhstan into the hands of the opposition, the people or China. But it may well not start a new war in Ukraine. This is what the West must remember.

By Josh Rogin, Washington Post columnist and political analyst at CNN

Source: Washington Post, AMPE