The President of Kazakhstan, Kasim-Yomart Tokáyev, assured this Monday that constitutional order has been restored and that the country has avoided a “coup” with the participation of “international terrorists.”
“Order has been fully restored in Kazakhstan. Dangers to the country’s security have been repelled“Tokayev said in a video conference with the leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the post-Soviet military alliance led by Russia.
The president, who thanked the CSTO for sending a military peacekeeping contingent made up of more than 2,000 men, denounced the disturbances in recent days as an “attempted coup.” “Now it is evident that all these combat actions areand coordination of a single center. They were the decisive phase of an operation planned in detail, “he stressed.
He added that this is demonstrated by “the simultaneous attacks on regional government buildings, the police, strategic infrastructures …”. “To disperse state resources, the organizers of the attack deployed a broad front. The aggression was simultaneous in 11 regions“said Tokáyev.
The main target of the attack, he added, was Almaty, the country’s largest city and main financial center. “The fall of this city would have opened the way to seize the entire densely populated south and then the entire country. The terrorists were counting on distracting the security forces and then attacking the capital of Kazakhstan, “he said.
The Kazakh president pointed out that the organizers of the “terrorist war” once morest the state prepared several waves of aggression. “In the first stage (…) there were peaceful protests. Then, in particular, in Almaty, political rallies were held and later on the city from three directions, as one huge pack of hyenasArmed guerrillas were launched, “he explained.
According to Tokáyev, at first the guerrillas posed as peaceful protesters, “but then began what will surely go down in history as the tragedy of Almaty“.
The trigger for the crisis was the rise in the price of liquefied gas, which sparked peaceful demonstrations in several cities of the country that later degenerated into violent riots. Several dozen people – including 16 police officers and two soldiers, and an unknown number of protesters, gunmen and passersby, including several minors – have died in the largest protests in 30 years of independence, according to authorities.
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