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A Russian-led military bloc will begin withdrawing its troops from Kazakhstan in two days’ time after fulfilling its main mission of stabilising the Central Asian country after serious unrest, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Tuesday.
Tokayev told parliament he was appointing a long-serving career public servant Alikhan Smailov as prime minister and spoke of initiatives to narrow the wealth gap, raise taxes on the mining sector, and eliminate irregularities in state procurement.
Tokayev, 68, last week asked the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to send in troops at the peak of what he later said was an attempted coup d’etat whose unnamed instigators had plunged half of the oil-rich nation’s territory into violence.
A day earlier, he said that the CSTO mission, whose legitimacy and duration were queried by Washington prompting an angry response from Moscow, numbered 2,030 troops and 250 pieces of military hardware.
“The main mission of the CSTO peacekeeping forces has been successfully completed,” Tokayev told parliament in a video conference call.
“In two days’ time a phased withdrawal of the CSTO united peacekeeping contingent will begin. The withdrawal process of the contingent will take no more than 10 days.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday said the deployment had been crucial, claiming victory in defending Kazakhstan from what he described as a foreign-backed terrorist uprising.
Tokayev says ex-leader Nazarbayev to leave security post
Kazakh authorities say order has been largely restored in the nation of 19 million and that almost 10,000 people have been detained over the unrest with a hunt for others ongoing.
The authorities say that initially peaceful protests against car fuel price increases were hijacked by groups aiming to overthrow the government.
Some Central Asia…
Source : france24
