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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Layering is an art form. All it takes is a bit of intention, style, and of course, the perfect cold weather staples.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All this week, heavy hitters from the United States and Russian governments have been meeting in Geneva to talk through their many differences on Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We talked about Ukraine on the show a week ago with Amy McKinnon. She's a reporter at Foreign Policy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A key sticking point in Russia's relationship with both Europe and the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the question of NATO expansion. Ukraine wants to join NATO. Vladimir Putin doesn't want them to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just to underscore the point, he sent about 100,000 of his troops to the Russia-Ukraine border. Lots of troops, Big story. Lots of people upset.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Meanwhile, a Russia-led alliance recently sent a far smaller number of troops to the oil-rich Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It has spent 2022 in turmoil. And while it's not getting nearly as much attention for people who watch the region, it is a really big deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amy McKinnon from Foreign Policy is one of them. We started with the turmoil. This whole thing began in southwest Kazakhstan as protests against a decision to lift a cap on fuel prices.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: The year has gotten off to a very bad start in Kazakhstan. It began with a sudden and steep increase in the cost of fuel, sparking deadly protests.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: For a long time, liquefied petroleum gas has been subject to a cap, which kept prices low. But on January 1st, they essentially lifted that cap. All of a sudden overnight making fuel prices subject to the whims of the market.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: This caused prices to almost double in some parts of the country. And so in Western Kazakhstan, people came out to the streets to protest these rises in fuel prices.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: But these protests quickly spiraled and were able to tap into a whole basket, a whole range of both political and socioeconomic grievances across Kazakhstan against corruption, against inequality, regional issues, the country's authoritarian rule.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: This is a country which has been ruled for three decades now since the collapse of the Soviet Union with a very iron fist.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: These just all kind of converged in early January as protests spread across the country. Thousands of Kossiks filled the streets of the capital, Almaty, attacking government buildings and demanding an end to over three decades of oppressive one-party rule.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And who's out in the streets protesting? It's been hard to get a good steady stream of accurate information coming out of Kazakhstan because very quickly as these protests escalated, the government shut off the internet in huge parts of the country.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Foreign journalists were prevented from getting in. There, of course, were many local, very brave Kazakh journalists working amidst all of this.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And then, of course, it's difficult to take what the government says on face value. It's an authoritarian regime and they have their own kind of particular agenda and spin to all of this.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: So it does appear that what began as a genuine protest at socioeconomic political grievances was kind of hijacked. And particularly in Almaty, which is the biggest city in Kazakhstan, hijacked and turned violent by the intervention of criminal gangs, some of whom have been reported to have connections with the family of the former president Nur Sultan Nazarbayev, turning these protests violent.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And that has been seen by a lot of Kazakh analysts as an indication that behind the scenes that some actors may, as part of an ongoing political power struggle, may have sought to capitalize on these protests and tilt them in a more violent direction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how does the government respond? The government responds actually by negotiating with protesters in Western Kazakhstan by agreeing to reimpose the cap on fuel prices.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But when protests turned violent in Almaty you know police officers were killed There were some horrific reports of police officers being beheaded amidst the chaos That when the government really starts to respond and to crack down
--:-- Amy McKinnon: The president gave the police the authority to open fire on protesters. Terrorists continue to damage state and private property and use weapons against civilians. I have given the order to shoot, to kill without warning.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And something like 10,000 people have now been arrested. People have been killed amidst the violence. That's huge in such a short space of time in response to protests, making these the most deadly protests, the most deadly unrest in Kazakhstan years since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so turmoil in the streets. We have no idea at this point how many are dead. The government in Kazakhstan picks up the phone and calls Russia for help.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Russia, in turn, sends in some troops, but they do it through this CSTO, which is the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Think of it as Russia's NATO for now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it was January 5th. So only three days after these protests began, I mean, that is how quickly things really escalated. President Tokayev turned to the CSTO, this Collective Security Organization, and asked for them to intervene.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: He's claimed that there's tens of thousands of terrorists, in his words, of foreign-trained terrorists, and using that as a justification for calling in this external security organization.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: I should say that whilst there's been reports of criminal gangs infiltrating the protests and kind of fueling the violence, I haven't seen any compelling evidence of foreign influence fueling these protests.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: That has kind of become the regional authoritarian leader's kind of the dog-ate-my-homework excuse for cracking down on dissent and civil society as pointing to kind of shadowy foreign interference, which is fueling these protests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who shows up when they call in the CSTO? The CSTO dispatched some two and a half thousand troops, mostly Russian troops, but there was also some from other members of the alliance, so from Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And they're dispatched to protect government buildings, to protect the oil industry. So they don't exactly hit the streets to quell these protests?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: They don't hit the streets. Amidst the violence in Almaty, government buildings were set on fire, protesters stormed the airport.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And so the CSTO troops were mostly deployed to these kind of points of critical infrastructure. The violent crackdown on protesters appears to have really been led by the security forces within Kazakhstan.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And the CSTO troops were really just brought in as kind of the heft on the sidelines to protect these institutions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That being said, how often does something like this happen? And how often is the CSTO called upon to enter a nation and secure government facilities or something like that?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: As far as I'm aware, this is at least the third time in the CSTO's history that a member has called upon an intervention. This is the first time the alliance has responded.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: In the past, they've always demurred, declined these requests. And so the CSTO was kind of seen as a little bit of a paper tiger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that's why it was such a shock to everybody who follows the region that they responded. And they responded so quickly.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: I mean, they were on the ground, I think, within 24 hours of the request being made.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More with Amy in a minute.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Adio Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to addio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That A dot com slash todayexplained
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amy, before we get into why the CSTO was called upon here in Kazakhstan and why they actually showed up this time, what exactly is this organization?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: I think Russia would like to see it as Russia's NATO. NATO definitely doesn't view it as that.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: They have avoided any kind of dealings with the CS2 to avoid just giving it any legitimacy.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: It has its roots in a collective security treaty, which was signed in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, between several countries that made up the Soviet Union as a collective security pact.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And then this was in 2002, kind of reconstituted into what we now know as the collective security treaty organization.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Right now, aside from Russia, it has five other members, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, Armenia, Belarus and, of course, Kazakhstan.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And it has been compared to NATO because, like NATO, the CSTO is based on a principle of collective defense, right? So an attack on one is an attack on all.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: NATO has Article 5, the CSTO has Article 4, which is basically the same.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And that's what the president of Kazakhstan invoked when he claimed that there was foreign terrorists who were behind this unrest and asked that CSTO to intervene.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned that there were two other cases where requests were made. What happened then?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: The sparks that set off these protests in Kyrgyzstan's capital city, Bishkek, were corruption, poverty and rising prices, including a 200 percent hike in electricity bills.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: So in 2010, amidst unrest in Kyrgyzstan, the country's interim president then asked the CSTO to intervene and they declined.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And it's not clear why. It may have been because there was an element of inter-ethnic violence going on and not wanting to wade into that.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And just last year, Armenia asked the CSTO to intervene amidst a border dispute with Azerbaijan, which was coming on the heels of the renewed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is in its ninth day. Both sides have accused each other of attacking civilian areas and the casualties are going up.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And again, the CSTO declined to intervene. Why? Do we know?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: So Armenia asked for support from the CSTO amidst these border incursions from Azerbaijan. And they thought about it and the alliance took a few months to respond, but ultimately they declined to get involved.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And the Bloc Secretary General said late last year that it was essentially a border incident and that the alliance could only be invoked in the case of an aggression or an attack, which makes it all the more interesting that they have now decided to intervene in Kazakhstan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And yet Kazakhstan calls on the CSTO in early January for these very internal sounding issues, you know, protests over inequality and price hikes with fuel. And they show up.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Do we have any idea why?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: So there's two parts, I think, to that. The first is why did Kazakhstan call on the CSTO?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: That may have been because, you know, it's not clear whether, you know, amidst this power struggle, which is kind of brewing behind the scenes, whether President Dukhaev felt that he could trust the military to actually come to his aid.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Kazakhstan does have its own army, fairly formidable security forces. They have the means domestically to crack this down.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And kind of ultimately they did. As we know from previous examples of authoritarian regimes, the moment that elites lose control of the security services, they're ousted from power pretty quickly.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: So he may have had his own questions about that.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And then there the second part of that which is well why did the CSTO respond
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And it nominally a multi grouping but it really you know it seen as doing as led by Russia and doing Russia bidding
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And, you know, one thing we know about the Kremlin's foreign policy is that they are extremely opportunistic.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: You know, they're very good at recognizing where there may be an opening to kind of tip things in their favor and to just step back and give you a kind of sense of, well, what is Kazakhstan's role? Where does it sit in the kind of broader structure of alliances in the region?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Kazakhstan, like a lot of Central Asia, has for a long time been very skillful at being on good terms with all of the major players in the region, right? They've maintained good relationships with Russia, but also with China, with India, with the West, with the United States.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And it's been kind of, there's been this kind of harmonious balance.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And so Russia may have seen an opening here to make themselves, you know, once you have essentially propped up a leader and kind of come to their aid in the midst of mass unprecedented unrest, you know, you really have made yourself dispensable to that leader.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: They may have seen an opening to position themselves closer to the Kazakh president, closer to the Kazakh leadership.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And so that then raises a lot of questions. Well, what does Russia want in return, right? They don't do this out of benevolence.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Does that mean that we might be seeing them making appearances in Central Asia more often?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: When President Tokayev framed the unrest as being fueled by an external terrorist threat, I mean, that's kind of similar excuse we see from leaders throughout the region.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: President Alexander Lukashenko made similar remarks in Belarus.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: And so if the CSTO is willing to take that on face value and intervene, I mean, it's not hard to see how in another country in the region, in the midst of unrest, a leader invokes those magic words of an external terrorist threat.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Whether, you know, highly likely to be imagined, it's not hard to imagine the CSTO potentially using the Kazakhstan model and repeating a similar intervention.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's going to be interesting to see how this pans out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And like, what sense do we get of Russia's long game here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is an advantageous favor they're doing Kazakhstan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then, of course, simultaneously, they're amassing troops at the Ukrainian border.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're telling the West that if Ukraine joins NATO, all hell's going to break loose.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, what exactly is the game that Russia is playing right now?
--:-- Amy McKinnon: I think if you were to boil it down into one word as to what the Russian strategy is here, it's influence.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: What they have demanded, and they've been pretty vocal about this, is they want influence over their neighbours.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: They do see the former Soviet Union, the former communist bloc, as their sphere of influence.
--:-- Amy McKinnon: Whenever they see an opportunity to just kind of put their thumbs on the scale in a regional crisis, to gain some more influence and leverage, even if it's just by a couple of inches, they're certainly very good at seeing those openings.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amy McKinnon, she's a reporter with Foreign Policy. You can read her work at foreignpolicy.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We spoke with Amy Wednesday morning.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Thursday morning, we got reports that the CSTO had begun withdrawing its troops from Kazakhstan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, edited by Matt Collette and Noel King, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hello! As you may have heard, Noel is our new co-host.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'll start hearing from her on the regular beginning February 16th, which will also be our thousandth episode.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mark your calendars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rest of the team includes Miles Bryan, Will Reed, Heidi Mawagdi, Halima Shah, and Amin Al-Sadi, who's our supervising producer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's Veep of audio.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld, too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We had extra engineering help this week from Paul Mounsey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Visit schwab.com to learn more.
