New Eastern Europe - November-December 2017

44

Strategic bonds

In February 2014 Zhirinovsky urged Russian authorities to annex the former

five Central Asian Soviet republics and turn them into a “Central Asian federal

district”, while Limonov called on the Kremlin to annex the northern parts of Ka-

zakhstan. Astana’s reaction was vociferous but was mostly ignored by Moscow,

which dismissed the calls as privately held views expressed by a small number of

individuals, not the Kremlin’s official policy.

On global issues, Kazakhstan staunchly sides with

Russia and supports many Russian integration initia-

tives in the former Soviet space. It is a founding mem-

ber of the Moscow-led free trade bloc, the Eurasian

Economic Union (EEU), which was set up in 2015

from the Custom Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and

Belarus. It is also a member of the CIS Collective Se-

curity Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a military alliance

of six former Soviet countries. Kazakhstan’s strategic

bonds with Russia are also largely determined by the

world’s second longest land border, stretching for

nearly 7,000 kilometres and where a sizeable ethnic

Russian population resides, which accounts for a fifth

of Kazakhstan’s total population.

Many consider these facts a guarantee that Russia will not consider going into

an open conflict with Kazakhstan and seize part of the territory. Others believe

that Kazakhstan’s ethnic Russians are too apolitical to organise themselves into a

meaningful force that would openly advocate the annexation of predominantly

Russian areas in northern and eastern Kazakhstan by Moscow.

“In the past there were certain public organisations that represented the inter-

ests of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan. But these organisations have long become

history. There is practically nothing to watch now and it is hard to judge the mood

based on publications by certain individuals,” says Andrey Chebotarev, director

of the Almaty-based Alternative think tank. “There are no deliberate factors that

would somehow worsen the socio-political mood among ethnic Russians in Ka-

zakhstan. There are some factors that affect the entire population but there are no

serious factors that specifically target the ethnic Russian population.”

Chebotarev, however, does not believe Crimea would be repeated in Kazakhstan:

“I have no expectation of the Crimean scenario because we do not have any serious

organised groups that existed in the 1990s, such as the Russian Community and

Lad (Russian nationalist organisations – editor’s note) as well as Cossack organisa-

Kazakhstan’s

bonds with

Russia are largely

determined by the

fact that it shares

the world’s second

longest land

border, stretching

for nearly 7,000

kilometres.

Opinion & Analysis The crawling threat of the Crimea scenario, Naubet Bisenov