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Washington’s and Kyiv’s Failed Attempt to Drive a “Fake News” Wedge between Kazakhstan and Russia

Vladimir Odintsov, August 31

NUR

The well-informed reader need not be reminded of the United States’ “eagerness” to regain the positions it has lost in Central Asia in recent years. And of Washington’s incessant attempts to separate the former CIS republics and now independent Central Asian states from Russia for this reason.

It is enough to recall the speech given in 1997 at the Johns Hopkins University by then-US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott who outlined a set of provisions that later became known as the ” Talbott Doctrine,” which essentially boils down to “We have no business being in Central Asia, but we will not let anyone else call the shots there, either.” So the United States, like a dog that marks its territory by raising its paw, has designated Central Asia as a “zone of United States strategic interests.” As the Middle East in the “Carter Doctrine,” the American continent in the “Monroe Doctrine,” and the entire world in the concepts of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

As for the Central Asian region, Washington has explicitly stated more than once that the strategic presence of the United States here presupposes reforms that the governments of the Central Asian republics themselves should address under the control of the United States, the international organizations it “oversees,” and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) inside and outside the region. Thus, it is quite clear that the strategy announced by the United States for Central Asia, with its slogans about supposedly “promoting sovereignty and economic prosperity,” is nothing but a strategy aimed at conquering this very important region by any means and building a belt of tension against Russia, China, and Iran.

A clear focus of this Washington effort has long been on Kazakhstan, a particularly resource- and human-capital-rich country in Central Asia (CA) that is of great military and strategic importance for the United States to counter not only Russia but also China and Iran. Therefore, it is not surprising that the recent rapprochement of this Central Asian country with Moscow, even after the change of leadership in Kazakhstan, is causing increasing nervousness and “concern” in Washington. This “concern” manifested itself, in particular, in the United States’ incitement of anti-government demonstrations and pogroms in Kazakhstan in early January of this year, which subsided after President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appealed to the CSTO.

It is also noteworthy that documents obtained by Ukrainian researchers confirmed Washington’s leading and organizational role in these provocations in January. As well as their data on the organization of terrorist attacks by the United States through Ukraine and attempts to overthrow the constitutional order in Kazakhstan through the so-called “Headquarters of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan,” which operates in Kyiv under the control of the SBU and US intelligence agencies.

In fact, no one is even trying to cover up Ukraine’s involvement in the events in Kazakhstan. Even the now arrested former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, a Ukrainian citizen, back in January reported on his social media page about a meeting of Kazakh oppositionists at his home in Kyiv.

The author will discuss the role of the Kyiv regime in fulfilling the mission of Washington and the CIA to work against Kazakhstan a little later. In the meantime, let us revisit the development by the States of “comprehensive measures to separate Kazakhstan from Russia.” In this regard, the “experts” of the American special services have done a considerable analytical work, as a result of which, apparently, the idea emerged of using individual speeches or words by President Kassym-Jomrat Tokayev critical of Russia to convince Moscow of his anti-Russian position. In particular, his articles with some nationalist undertones. Or the decision of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, three days before the elections to the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, to establish the Central Asian Investment Partnership (CAIP) in cooperation with the United States for the purpose of joint “prosperity” to activate the political platform “C5+1” (the United States plus the countries of the region) pushed by Washington. However, Moscow has repeatedly pointed out that Washington is preparing to abuse these formats by promoting the “Greater Central Asia” project through them in order to oust Russia.

Washington clearly “took note” of the Kazakh President’s speech in mid-June at SPIEF, where he stated at the Forum’s plenary session, in the presence of Vladimir Putin, that Kazakhstan does not recognize the LPR and the DPR, calling them “quasi-state territories.”

On this basis, a propaganda-disinformation campaign has been developed to create contradictions between Russia and Kazakhstan. As a “fuse” for another American sabotage of the strengthening relations between Moscow and the new leadership of Kazakhstan, Moscow’s development of its special operation to denazify the Kyiv regime and the corresponding critical reaction of Russia to the actions of the countries supplying the armed forces of Ukraine with weapons and ammunition for combat and terrorist operations in the east of this country, was used.

Thus, “in the minds of American experts” the idea of accusing Kazakhstan of allegedly supplying Ukraine with weapons and shells harmful to Russia’s interests was born. And, of course, Washington has chosen Ukraine as the main perpetrator of this information sabotage, through which the United States has literally been circulating various fake news lately and paying its Ukrainian accomplices handsomely.

And so the hackers of the Ukrainian group “Beregini” leaked data on the alleged supply of weapons to the Ukrainian army on the social network and published the second episode of the movie “Lord of War”: how Britain buys weapons from Kazakhstan for Ukraine through a front company in Bulgaria. To increase their persuasiveness, the hackers even posted documents purporting to contain a draft contract for the purchase of ammunition by a Jordanian company from the Kazakh firm Technoexport. This specified 122 mm shells for D-20 howitzers; 152 mm shells for D-30 howitzers; rockets for BM -21 Grad. The total number is 20 thousand shells and 33 thousand rockets. The deal was allegedly concluded on July 16, 2022, in the amount of $46 million, and was supervised by the British military attaché in Kazakhstan …

Unfortunately, some Russian media fell prey to this provocation and published their articles under headlines such as “Split in CSTO: Kazakhstan is arming Ukraine”, “Kazakhstan is stabbing the Russian army in the back …”, “Weapon “multivectorness” of Kazakhstan ?”, etc.

This is exactly what was expected in Washington and Kyiv, which have recently intensified their disinformation attacks on Russia and Russian citizens, targeting individual sensation-seeking representatives of the old profession.

However, there is no proof of the authenticity of the documents presented by the “Ukrainian hackers,” nor is there any certainty that these are not fake news of the American and Ukrainian special services.

On the other hand, there is an official response from the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan, which refutes the information about the alleged sale of weapons to the UK for supplies to Ukraine. In particular, it is emphasized that the export of arms and ammunition is carried out only if there is a guarantee obligation of the importing country, which obligatorily stipulates that the importing country will not re-export these arms and ammunition without the permission of the authorized body of Kazakhstan in the field of export control. But such permits for re-export of arms and ammunition mentioned in the publications of the “Ukrainian hackers” were not issued by the ministry, the Kazakh ministry stressed.

In order to avoid provocations by Washington and its allies regarding exports of military products from Kazakhstan in the near future, the latter country’s authorities decided to temporarily suspend such exports until the end of August next year.

Undoubtedly, the issue of Kazakhstan’s alleged arms supplies to the Kyiv regime was raised during the last meeting of the presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan in Sochi on August 19, where a wide range of issues of bilateral relations and joint actions against the background of external threats were discussed. However, the friendly tone of the conversation between the two presidents fully confirms the failure of this latest provocative sabotage operation by Washington and Kyiv against Russia and Kazakhstan.

Vladimir Odintsov, political commentator, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.