CSTO troop deployment in Kazakhstan will have a short-term effect - experts

Baku/07.01.22/Turan: The entry of CSTO troops and the Russian military, in particular, to Kazakhstan may have a short-term success. In the long run, it will only exacerbate the political crisis in the country, experts in Azerbaijan believe.

There are reports of the arrival of special forces of the Federal Security Service and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Federation in Kazakhstan, political analyst Khagani Jafarli told the Voice of America.

"The overthrow of an authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan after Ukraine would be a disaster for Russia.

However, Moscow has no power to prevent post-Soviet republics from fighting for freedom, he said.

Political scientist Anar Mammadli believes that Tokayev's government declined from working with the civil society and human rights activists and prefered to use force to disperse protesters.

"The way out of this crisis is not to introduce troops from abroad and repeat the 1986 crisis in Almaty, or in 1990 in Baku and in 1991 in Vilnius.  The effect of introducing troops cannot be long-term," Mammadli noted.

According to him, the invitation of "peacekeepers" just intensified the protests, because it angered the population because of the authorities' intention to invite external forces.

Tokayev will not hold out for long, and most likely he will face the fate of Abdurrahman Vezirov. (former first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan who fled after the troops' withdrawal in 1990), he said.

Mammadli believes that the West must express its attitude towards what is happening and impose sanctions on the Kazakhstan authorities and the states that have deployed troops there.

The leader of the Party of People's Front of Azerbaijan, Ali Kerimli, also believes that Russia has made another mistake by sending troops to Kazakhstan.

"This is a temporary success and the consequences for Russia will be severe," he believes. This will just intensify anti-Russian sentiments, and not only in Kazakhstan," Kerimli believes.-06D-