The president of Kazakhstan has said that most of the constitutional order has been restored by Reuters

Author: Olzhas Auyezov

ALMATY (Reuters) – Security forces appeared to be controlling the streets of Kazakhstan’s main city, Almaty, on Friday morning, and the president said most of the constitutional order had been restored, with Russia sending troops and eliminating insurgency across the country a day later.

However, new gunfire could be heard in the morning near the city center square, where troops and protesters had been fighting for much of the previous day.

Dozens of people have been killed in street clashes and protesters have set fire to and explored public buildings in several cities in the worst violence in the 30-year independence of the Central Asian state.

Demonstrations that began in response to rising fuel prices have become a widespread movement against the 81-year-old Nursultan Nazarbayev government and former leader, the longest-serving ruler of the former Soviet state.

He resigned as president three years ago, but his family is believed to have retained power.

Nazarbayev’s hand-picked successor, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, called on Russian paratroopers on Thursday as part of a former Soviet state force to help stop the uprising, which he described as a revolt by foreign-trained militants.

“A counter-terrorism operation has been launched. Law enforcement and law enforcement are working hard. The constitutional order has been largely restored in all regions of the country,” Tokayev said in a statement.

“Local authorities are in control of the situation. But terrorists are still using weapons and harming the property of civilians. Therefore, counter-terrorism actions must be pursued until the militants are completely eradicated.”

ALMATIAN TROOPS

The Interior Ministry said 26 “armed criminals” had been “liquidated” and more than 3,000 had been arrested, and 18 members of the police and national guard had been killed since the protests began.

On Friday morning, Reuters reporters saw armored personnel carriers and troops in the main square of Almaty.

A hundred yards away, a dead man was in a damaged civilian car. Elsewhere in the city, an ammunition store was searched. Some 100 people dressed in military vehicles and military uniforms also took up positions in another square in Almaty.

Unrest has spread to many other cities across the country with a population of 19 million. The Internet has been closed since Wednesday, and it is difficult to determine the full extent of the violence.

The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization said there would be about 2,500 peacekeepers from the former Soviet states and would stay in Kazakhstan for a few days or weeks.

Tokayev’s administration said the force was still arriving and that they were not fighting or “eliminating the militants”.

The violence is unprecedented in a country firmly ruled by Nazarbayev for decades, the former Soviet Communist Party leader who was in power in a former Soviet state when he handed over the presidency to Tokaiev in 2019.

Nazarbayev has not been seen or heard since the protests began. Tokayev has sought to distance himself from his predecessor, removing Nazarbayev and his nephew from security posts since protests began.

The Tokayev administration said it was consolidating the identities of the detained militants and investigating the possibility of belonging to an extremist organization.

The president will address the nation on Friday, his administration said, urging people in Almaty to restrict travel around the city “while the search for hidden bandits is underway.”

Kazakhstan is a major oil producer and the world’s largest uranium producer.

In its upper area, Tengiz, oil output was reduced on Thursday by area operators Chevron (NYSE 🙂 said some contractors were disrupting the train lines in support of the protests. The global price of oil has risen and the price of uranium has risen sharply since the clashes began.

The country also accounts for one-fifth of global bitcoin “mining,” a process that is electricity-intensive to record cryptocurrency transactions, and since the closure of the Internet, the computing power of the global bitcoin network has declined.