The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the Russian peacekeeping forces from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) mission have begun to carry out the tasks assigned to them to protect vital installations and key infrastructure in Kazakhstan.
The Russian Defense said, in a statement yesterday, that “Russian peacekeeping units, which had previously arrived on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, began to carry out the tasks assigned to them to protect vital installations, airports and major social infrastructure facilities.”
The ministry stressed that “the main tasks of the CSTO peacekeeping forces include protecting important government and military facilities in Kazakhstan and helping Kazakh law enforcement agencies stabilize the situation and return it to the legal sphere.”
For its part, the Ministry of Interior of Kazakhstan reported yesterday that “more than 5,135 people were arrested during the recent protests throughout Kazakhstan.”
The CSTO countries announced earlier that they will send peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan after the Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appealed to the leaders of the member states of the organization to help his country overcome what he described as the “terrorist threat”. The collective peacekeeping forces include, in addition to the forces of the Russian Federation, units of the armed forces of Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Earlier, the President of Kazakhstan ordered the army to shoot the militants without warning, adding: “We are dealing with foreign bandits, and 20,000 terrorists participated in the attack.”
For days, Kazakhstan has witnessed a wave of protests that started with economic demands that turned into violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces in a number of cities, including Alma-Ata, the country’s largest city.