The crawling threat of
the Crimea scenario
NAUBET BISENOV
Kazakhstan staunchly sides with Russia in global
affairs and supports many of its integration
initiatives in the former Soviet space. However,
following the annexation of Crimea the fear
that Kazakhstan’s ethnic Russian regions might
share the peninsula’s fate has returned.Kazakh citizens arriving at the railway station in the northern sleepy town of
Petropavlovsk may find it puzzling that the clocks on the station’s walls show a
time different than the local time zone. The oddity stems from the fact that the
Petropavlovsk station, as well as many other Kazakh stations in the North Kazakh-
stan region, lies along Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway and is operated by Russian
Railways. Hence, the clocks show Moscow time, which is three hours behind the
local time. North Kazakhstan is also one of the two Kazakh regions, along with
the neighbouring Kostanay region, where ethnic Russians still outnumber ethnic
Kazakhs, despite the continuing depopulation processes caused by the emigration
of ethnic Russians to Russia and higher birth rate among ethnic Kazakhs.
Due to these geographic, economic and demographic factors, some Russian pol-
iticians and public figures (such as the outspoken Russian Duma member Vladimir
Zhirinovsky or the author Eduard Limonov) have questioned Astana’s grip on the
predominantly Russian areas and have even called for Moscow’s annexation of the
territories. This has given rise to serious concerns among Kazakh experts and the
wider public over a potential repeat of the Crimean scenario in the northern and
eastern Kazakh regions.