Today, Explained - Why Russia sent its janky version of NATO to Kazakhstan

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

The speedy arrival of CSTO troops in Kazakhstan is unprecedented in the 30-year history of the Russia-backed regional security alliance. Today’s show was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette and Noel King, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. 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. We talked about Ukraine on the show a week ago with Amy McKinnon. She's a reporter at Foreign Policy. 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. 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. Meanwhile, a Russia-led alliance recently sent a far smaller number of troops to the oil-rich Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. This is a country which has been ruled for three decades now since the collapse of the Soviet Union with a very iron fist. And these just all kind of converged in early January as protests spread across the country.

Thousands of Kazakhs filled the streets of the capital, Almaty, attacking government buildings and demanding an end to over three decades of oppressive one-party rule. 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. Foreign journalists were prevented from getting in. There of course were many local, very brave Kazakh journalists working amidst all of this uh and then of course it's um 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 so it does appear that

what began as a genuine protest at socio-economic 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, Nursultan Nazarbayev, turning these protests violent. 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. 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. 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's when the government really starts to respond and to crack down. 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. 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 point how many are dead. The government in Kazakhstan picks up the phone and calls Russia for help. 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. 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.

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. 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. That has kind of become the regional authoritarian leaders, 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. 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. 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? They don't hit the streets. Amidst the violence in Almaty, government buildings were set on fire, protesters stormed the airport. 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. And the CSTO

troops were really just brought in as kind of the heft on the sidelines to protect these institutions. That being said, how often does something like this happen? How often is the CSTO called upon to enter a nation and secure government facilities or something like that? 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. 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.

And so that's why it was such a shock to everybody who follows the region that they responded. And they responded so quickly. I mean, they were on the ground, I think, within 24 hours of the request being made. More with Amy in a minute. Thank you. management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank.

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What exactly is this organization? I mean, Russia's NATO seems like the shorthand, but is that all it is? I think Russia would like to see it as Russia's NATO. NATO definitely doesn't view it as that. They have avoided any kind of dealings with the CSTO to avoid just giving it any legitimacy. 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 and then this was in 2002 kind of reconstituted into what we now know as the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Right now, aside from Russia, it has five other members, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, Armenia, Belarus, and of course, Kazakhstan. 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. NATO has Article 5, the CSTO has Article 4, which is basically the same. 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. And this is the first time the CSTO actually has intervened. You mentioned that there were two other cases where requests were made. What happened then? The sparks that set off these protests in Kyrgyzstan's capital

city, Bishkek, were corruption, poverty, and rising prices, including a 200% hike in electricity bills. So in 2010, amidst unrest in Kyrgyzstan, the country's interim president then asked the CSTO to intervene and they declined. 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. 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. 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. And again, the CSTO declined to intervene. Why? Do we know? 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. 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. 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. Do we have any idea why? So there's two parts, I think, to that. The first is, why did Kazakhstan call on the CSTO? 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. You know, Kazakhstan does have its own army, fairly formidable security forces. They have the means domestically to crack this down. 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. So he may have had his own questions about that. And then, you know, there's the second part of that, which is, well, why did the CSTO respond? And it's nominally a multi-nation grouping, but it's really, you know, it's seen as doing, as led by Russia and doing Russia's bidding. And, you know, one thing

we know about the Kremlin's foreign policy is that they are extremely opportunistic. 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? 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. And there's been this kind of harmonious

balance. 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. They may have seen an opening to position themselves closer to the Kazakh president, closer to the Kazakh leadership. 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. Does that mean that we might be seeing them making appearances in Central Asia more often? we see from leaders throughout the region. President Alexander Lukashenko made similar remarks in Belarus. 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, 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. So it's going to be interesting to see how this pans out. And like, what sense do we get of Russia's long game here? This is an advantageous favor they're doing Kazakhstan. And then of course, simultaneously, they're amassing troops at the Ukrainian border. They're telling the West that if Ukraine joins NATO, all hell's going to break loose. I mean, what exactly is the game that Russia is playing right now?

Is it just trying to rebuild the Soviet Union, the Soviet bloc? I think if you were to boil it down into one word as to what the Russian strategy is here, it's influence. What they have demanded, and they've been pretty vocal about this, is they want influence over their neighbors. You know, they do see the former Soviet Union, the former communist bloc as their sphere of influence. Whenever they see an opportunity to just kind of put their thumbs on the scale in a regional crisis to, you know, to gain some more

influence and leverage, even if just by a couple of inches, they're certainly very good at seeing those openings and seizing upon them very quickly. Amy McKinnon, she's a reporter with Foreign Policy. You can read her work at foreignpolicy.com. We spoke with Amy Wednesday morning. On Thursday morning, we got reports that the CSTO had begun withdrawing its troops from Kazakhstan. Our show today was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, engineered by Afim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and edited by Matthew Collette,

and Noelle King. Hello! As you may have heard, Noelle's our new co-host. You'll start hearing from her on the regular beginning February 16th, which will also be our thousandth episode. Mark your calendars. The rest of the team includes Miles Bryan,

Will Reed, Heidi Mawagdi, Halima Shah, and Amin Al-Sadi, who's our supervising producer. Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's Veep of audio. We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld, too. We had extra engineering help this week from Paul Mounsey. I'm Sean Ramos for him. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. you