The Kazakh president requested the peacekeeping troops as an uprising, sparked by a gas price increase in the resource-rich Central Asian nation, headed toward a fifth day.
Summary
- MOSCOW — A Russian-led military alliance said late Wednesday that it would send peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan at the invitation of the country’s president to help put down a growing protest movement there.
- He did not elaborate on how many soldiers could be mobilized or how long they might stay.
- Russia is notorious for sending in troops under the guise of peacekeeping missions that go on to establish a permanent presence in the host countries.
- The Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, issued the invitation earlier in the evening.
- Calling the demonstrators “a band of international terrorists,” he said he was turning to Russia’s version of NATO, called the Collective Security Treaty Organization, to “help Kazakhstan overcome this terrorist threat.”