2022 January Events and CSTO Peacekeeping Mission in Kazakhstan

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Introduction

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) peacekeeping operation in the Republic of Kazakhstan (RK)¹ from 6 to  19 January 2022 has made it possible to preserve constitutional order in this Central Asian republic, which suffered an attempt of a coup d’état caused by mass protests that paralyzed the country. The aim of this article is to examine the course of the January events, including the deployment of the CSTO peacekeeping contingent, and to assess their impact on the domestic and foreign policy of Kazakhstan. The article also analyzes how the peacekeeping operation has influenced the organization itself, expanded its scope and deepened cooperation among the participating countries within the CSTO regional security community.

Materials and Methods

The study is based on interviews with experts from six CSTO member states. Their selection was based on the fact that they had studied the issue in their academic activities and/or had already commented on the  January events in Kazakhstan in the media. The article presents the generalized results of the experts’ interviews, supplemented by the author’s conclusions based on the included event observations and the analysis of both facts and official documents; the results of the interviews have not been published anywhere before.

In total, the author interviewed 11 experts. In order to maintain the ethics of the study, all the results of the expert survey were anonymized. T.V. Marmotova, PhD in History, Professor, Astana International University (Astana, online, April 2022), A.T. Tazhibayev, Director of the Center for Analytical Studies “Eurasian monitoring” (offline, Astana, January 2023); and O.A. Shegirbayev, Director of the “QazTrade” Analytical Department (offline, Astana, January 2023) participated at the interviewing from Kazakhstan. The Russian Federation was represented by Y.A. Nikitina, PhD in Political Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of World Political Processes, MGIMO University (online, January 2023, Moscow); A.A. Permoniva, Chief Editor of the Information and Analytical Center portal at Moscow State University (online, April 2022, Moscow); A.A. Kazantsev, Senior Research Fellow, MGIMO University (online, April 2022, Moscow); and S.A. Pritchin, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Post-Soviet Studies IMEMO at the Russian Academy of Sciences (online, April 2022, Moscow). P.S. Vorobyov, Research Fellow, Institute for Strategic Analysis and Forecasting, ISAP (online, January 2023 Bishkek) was interviewed from the Kyrgyz Republic.

From the Republic of Armenia:  G. Mikaelyan, Senior Research Fellow, Caucasus Institute (online, January 2023, Yerevan). From the Republic of Belarus:  I.M. Avlasenko, PhD in History, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, Belarusian State University (online, January 2023, Minsk). From the Republic of Tajikistan: R.Sh. Shukrullozoda, PhD in Political Sciences, independent researcher (online, April 2023, Dushanbe).

In addition to the results of the expert interviews, the author analyzed official statements by the authorities of the CSTO member countries, as well as publications by Russian (Bobrova, 2022; Dzhantaleeva, 2022; Kashirina & Epiphanova, 2022; Kornilenko, 2020; Malyshev, 2022; Morozov, 2022; Chaevich, 2022; Shamarov, 2022a; 2022b)  and Kazakh authors (Konyrbaeva, 2022; Kudaibergenova & Laruelle, 2022; Murat, 2022; Sairambay, 2022), also including researchers from abroad (Hudson, 2022; Santos, 2022)  in peer-reviewed academic journals. In order  to conceptualize the study, the author used  the terminology developed by Karl Deutsch (1957) related to the security community  and by Ethel Solingen (2007) and Robert Putnam (1988) regarding state-society  relations.

Based on the analysis of the above-mentioned materials, the results of the study were systematized and combined into thematic blocks, which are presented below.

Timeline of January Events

The 2022 January tragedy was considered an “attempt of coup d’état” and a “terrorist attack” against Kazakhstan.² Investigations into the events caused the opening of more than four thousand criminal cases related to murder, robbery, looting, weapon theft and damage to property; more than two hundred people died and about five thousand were injured.³

The “organization methodology” of the January events was developed in advance and represented a well-coordinated and complex approach with extensive information support. In terms of the chronology of events, the initial stage began with demonstrations in the most protest-prone western region of the republic, then spread throughout the country and escalated into robberies in the densely populated southern regions of the country. During the third phase, characterized by armed confrontation, the hardest situation occurred in the south of the country, in particular, in Almaty, the financial, transport and business center of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The coherence and professionalism of actions aimed at seizing strategic objects, such as buildings of the city administration (akimat) and the National Security Committee, as well as weapon stores, demonstrate that the activity was coordinated from a single decision-making center. In addition to Almaty, there were rioting attacks in 9 other regional centers, with the active participation of criminal and Islamist groups.⁴ The radicals armed themselves, robbing weapon stores and departments with ammunition and disarming policemen.⁵

In the peaceful stage, the protest groups included local activists, journalists, representatives of trade unions and individuals who were informed about the demonstrations through social networks (Sairambay, 2022,  p. 585). The radical phase involved criminal groups, spontaneous and organized aggressive-minded residents and rioters, perilous individuals and terrorist groups were involved. The formal reason for the demonstrations was the rise in the price of liquefied gas, which was reduced from 0.28 to 0.20 USD per litre immediately after the protesters expressed their demands.⁶

With the radicalization of protests in the country, a state of emergency and a curfew were imposed. There were electricity cuts and the internet was shut down. Wealthy citizens left the country (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 27). It is noteworthy that the individuals and groups directly involved in the January events had no leader and never tried to explain what their demands were. Experts agree that the  ultimate goal of the riots was a coup  d’état and the seizure of power. Besides that, most of the interviewed experts and researchers writing on this issue believe that the January tragedy was a failed attempt at a color revolution in Kazakhstan (Dzhantaleeva, 2022, p. 210; Chaevich, 2022; Sergeev & Volkov, 2023, p. 25).

CSTO Peacekeeping Mission

Faced with an armed attempt of a coup d’état, the head of the state requested the CSTO allies “to bring a joint peacekeeping contingent to assist in establishing constitutional order.”⁷ The CSTO immediately responded to the request by sending a joint contingent to the republic.

The CSTO peacekeeping operation was carried out from January 6 to 19, 2022, active phase — from January 7 to 13 (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 23). Its contingent from Armenia included 70 soldiers; from Belarus — the 5th independent specialized brigade and the 103rd airborne Vitebsk brigade; from Kyrgyzstan — the 25th brigade of special forces “Scorpion”; from Russia — units of the 31st independent airborne assault peacekeeping forces, the  98th airborne division, the 38th guards  control brigade and the 45th independent  special forces brigade of the airborne forces; from Tajikistan — 200 militaries (Malyshev, 2022, p. 126). In total, 2.5 thousand military personnel, 250 pieces of military equipment  and 75 aircraft were involved in the operation, while its coordination and the deployment  of troops was carried out by the Russian Federation (Shamarov, 2022a, pp. 23—24, 30). Collective peacekeeping forces were  deployed in the Almaty region and the cities of Astana and Almaty, with a command center  at the Military Institute of the Ground Forces (Bobrova, 2022, p. 24).

The operation took place without a UN mandate, because according to the CSTO’s regulatory framework, this is only required for the deployment of peacekeeping troops on  the territory of non-member-states (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 23; Kashirina & Epiphanova, 2022,  p. 385).

As a result of the deployment of peacekeeping troops, which were used to protect government institutions and agencies, power plants, airports, weapons storages, critical infrastructure and food security facilities, the government managed to free up military and police forces and send them to counter terrorists and marauders in the South of Kazakhstan (Sergeev & Volkov, 2023, p. 25). The operation was carried out without  loss of personnel, highly efficiently and in the shortest possible time, and already on the  third day from the moment it began, the order in the republic was re-established (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 24).

In fact, the peacekeeping operation was aimed at supporting the ruling authorities in the republic and President K.K. Tokayev (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 25), thus demonstrating to the national elites and the world community the legitimacy of the current leadership and the institution of the presidency in the eyes of its closest allies.

The arrival of the CSTO troops also forced the military institutions of Kazakhstan to choose a side. It turned out that officials from the highest military institutions were involved in the organization of the January events; and a special role for these tragic events was assigned to representatives of the National Security Committee, who were either  involved in preparing the attacks or were inactive at the time when they were  required to defend the country. Thus, the National Security Committee has about  30 thousand militants, the Ministry of Internal Affairs — 140 thousand, and the armed  forces — 135 thousand; however, before the start of the peacekeeping operation, they restrained themselves from subduing the surges (Morozov, 2022, p. 9). The military overweight of the ruling authorities after the introduction of the CSTO troops consolidated all military forces on the side of the president. They were ordered to eliminate persons who refused  to lay down their arms within the framework of the anti-terrorist operation by internal  forces (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 22). The January events became a turning point in the history of Kazakhstan after the collapse of the USSR and influenced its political modernization, the scale of which can already be estimated.

The Impact of the January Tragedy  and the Peacekeeping Operation  on Kazakhstan

The January events highlighted a number of problems related to “state — society relations,” which had not been resolved for decades in the republic, and questioned the “political survival” of the constitutional order in the country and its existing hierarchy of governance (Solingen, 2007, p. 760). The main internal problems include the split of political and business elites, the active work  of 22 thousand registered NGOs in the republic, the low level of patriotism among young  people, distrust to the electoral system, the population’s impoverishment due to the coronavirus pandemic, social inequality, as well as serious demographic changes due to mass migration from rural to urban areas (Dzhantaleeva, 2022, p. 213; Chaevich, 2022,  p. 114; Konyrbaeva, 2022, p. 156; Murat, 2022, p. 43; Iermano & Gutorova, 2022, p. 34).

The consequences of the January events are currently most evident in domestic politics and in the transfer of power to the actual head of the republic; no changes have been observed in the country’s politics in the global arena. The opinions of experts on these issues are given below.

The Process  of Power Transfer Completion

Nursultan Abishevich Nazarbayev, who started to lead Kazakhstan even before the collapse of the USSR (in 1989) and ruled the republic until the voluntary power transfer in March 2019. After N.A. Nazarbayev left power, the leadership was transferred to Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev. Despite the fact that the first President retired, his influence remained very important due to his historical significance and undeniable political weight as an Elbasy. The January events put an end to this dual power system and led to the consolidation of society and the ruling circles around the actual head of the state. This technique of strengthening power through recognition by allied countries and, more generally, at the international level, was previously used in Kazakhstan under the rule of N.A. Nazarbayev. Such a “two-level game” (Putnam, 1988,  p. 434) made it possible to demonstrate the correctness of the government’s actions for its voters, to raise the self-awareness of the nation, and was an indicator of the country’s achievements.

In political terms, it was implemented by initiating the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, chairing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, organizing the Astana process on Syria, obtaining the status of a non-permanent member in the UN Security Council, and  other actions; in economic terms, it was implemented by entering the top 50 of the World Competitiveness Ranking, and for branding purposes it was used by hosting EXPO-2017 and the Asian Games. The difference is that under the government of the first President, this strategy was softer and was based on the achievements and recognition of Kazakhstan at the world stage, and focused on soft power. Regarding the January events, the approach was more dramatic and based on hard power.

Internal Reforms

After the end of the peacekeeping operation and the return to stability, the country’s authorities recognized such deep economic and social problems, such as the raw material nature of the economy, the lack of technology, innovative and professional human resources, low labor productivity and the existence of the financial and oligarchic groups and oligopolies, who mostly benefit from national economic growth.⁸

After the January events, the strategy of a “Fair Kazakhstan” and political reformation through the modernization of “citizen — business — state” relations was initiated as an internal affair (Dzhantaleeva, 2022, p. 214). Personnel replacement started among the top authorities, which meant that the organizers of the protests, including representatives of the authorities and the military circles, primarily the National Security Committee, were imprisoned for state betrayal.⁹ Social payments were increased, including those through the established “People of Kazakhstan Fund,” aimed at supporting vulnerable society groups, raising the level of public services, macroeconomic stability, and industrialization of production and development of small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, as part of the political modernization, in June 2022, a nationwide referendum was held to elect the president for a single seven years term, and in March 2023, early parliamentary elections were held, in which the number of parties represented in Parliament was expanded from four to six.¹⁰

Foreign Policy

Experts agree that there are no obvious changes in Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. The country continues to pursue a multi-vector policy, which involves its participation in the integration processes within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the development of strategic relations with the EU, China and the United States. Despite the fact that Russia played a leading role in the CSTO peacekeeping operation, there is no clear pro-Russian turn in the foreign policy of Kazakhstan, as evidenced by the fact that even after the tragic January events that questioned the statehood and sovereignty of the republic, American bio-laboratories were not closed in the country and interaction with the US intelligence services continued (Shamarov, 2022a, pp. 25—26). Foreign policy is aimed at convincing investors of the stability of the investment climate in the republic, which has suffered dramatically, maneuvering between the interests of Russia and China, two great neighboring powers, and non-regional powers, such as the United States, the EU and Turkey, while avoiding secondary sanctions in the conditions unprecedented sanctions pressure on Russia as the main trading partner of Kazakhstan. Under the conditions of the current “geopolitical storm,” it is extremely difficult to maintain such a multi-vector policy.¹¹ However, there is no point in expecting it to change because of the uncertainty regarding the outlines of a new world order, the dependence of the country on international financial institutions and the demand for its export goods in the external market of raw materials, including the relatively low “geopolitical independence index” of Kazakhstan (Dzhantaleeva, 2022, p. 212).

The Impact of the Peacekeeping  Operation in Kazakhstan  on the CSTO Security Community

The successful peacekeeping operation had an impact not only on Kazakhstan but on the entire region. The consequences have had a long-term effect and have positively affected both the internal organization of the CSTO and its significance at the global level; the following consequences can be mentioned.

Confirmation of the CSTO Effectiveness

This collective security organization was called a “paper tiger” because it had never been involved in a peacekeeping operation, either independently or under the mandate of the UN (Kornilenko, 2020, p. 716). The peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan changed this attitude, and the effectiveness of the CSTO was recognized both at the world level and in the Kremlin. This is confirmed by its mention in the new Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation of March 31, 2023, which refers to the need of “strengthening the peacekeeping  and anti-crisis potential” of the organization.¹² Moreover, the CSTO is a unique organization because in military-political terms it unites countries from different geographical regions  in the Caucasus (Armenia), Europe (Russia  and Belarus) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). The creation and transformation of the CSTO was dictated by the historical realities and challenges of the world order. Thus, the collapse of the USSR and the single allied security doctrine, the disintegration of the unified command and control of the armed forces and the material and technical base had a negative impact on the combat capability of the armies of the newly independent states, as well as on the interaction among them.

In this regard, to enforce regional security the Collective Security Treaty was concluded in 1992, under the basis of which the CSTO  was established in 2002, along with the  signing of the Charter.¹³ The organization has observer status at the UN; it faces a number of important tasks, including joint measures to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, upgrading the armed forces equipment, maintaining the operational capability of the armies of the participating countries, and providing a collective response to new threats to regional security (Iermano & Gutorova, 2022, pp. 38—39).

One of these threats was an attempted coup and a terrorist attack in Kazakhstan, which the CSTO successfully dealt with in the shortest possible time. The success of the operation also proved that the organization is capable of giving a fast response to a serious crisis more effectively than peacekeeping operations led by NATO, the OSCE and the UN, which are often accompanied by personnel losses and are characterized by long implementation period (Shamarov, 2022a, pp. 23—24). In addition, the operation strengthened the “geopolitical influence” of the CSTO and the Russian Federation in the region and on the international arena, along with Russian peacekeeping activities in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh (Santos, 2022, p. 101; Shamarov, 2022a, p. 31; Shamarov, 2022b, p. 19).

Expanding the Scope  of the CSTO Responsibility

Experts consider that the January tragedy, in terms of organization techniques, is a methodological hybrid approach of a coup d’état and has no analogue of the previously implemented illegal change of the constitutional order. The situation is similar to the Arab Spring, the events of March 1, 2008, in Armenia, the protests in Iran in 2019 and the Ukrainian Euromaidan, but the main characteristic of the January events is their “clearly violent nature.” The revolutions in Kyrgyzstan can be used as an example, but the causes of these revolutions and, more generally, the social background of the events in Kyrgyzstan were very different from those in Kazakhstan. There is a similarity with the Belarusian events of 2020, but in Belarus the protests developed after the announcement of the election results, while in Kazakhstan at the time of the tragedy there were no elections.

Despite the unprecedented nature of the intellectual methods of the coup attempt in the republic, the CSTO promptly neutralized it and demonstrated itself in practice with the new status of defender of the constitutional order and law-enforcement in the participating countries, asserting its peacekeeping capability in the regional and global context. However, this is not the only new application of the organization’s potential. Within the framework of the CSTO, defense integration can also be promoted. The restoration of defense enterprises and factories, which either were closed or felt into decline on the territory of Kazakhstan after the collapse of the USSR, significantly reducing production, and their integration into the material and technical needs of the organization, could become one of the areas of such defense integration. These initiatives could have a positive impact on the development of the northern and central regions of the republic, creating thousands of jobs that would be generated by both the defense enterprises themselves and the service business formed around them. In addition to establishing law and order and deepening defense integration, the CSTO should also be developed institutionally, which is one of the tasks of the new CSTO Secretary General Imangali Nurgalievich Tasmagambetov, who has served as Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Kazakhstan, mayor of Astana and Almaty, and has established himself as an effective business executive.

Deepening Integration within  the Eurasian Security Community

Some of the experts in this article consider the CSTO to be a mature regional security community. The majority, however, believe that the organization still has many problems to solve.¹⁴ The security community, in the theoretical understanding of its corresponding founder Karl Deutsch and his followers, is a territory whose members have achieved real guarantees that they will not use force against each other and that all social problems between them will be resolved by peaceful actions (Deutsch, 1957, p. 5). Regional security communities are “zones of stable peace” created by “security regionalism” that are based on collective security, economic interdependence, common democratic institutions, and transnational coalitions of domestic political groups (Solingen, 1998, p. 3; Mansfield & Solingen, 2010, p. 153). Within the area of ​​responsibility of the CSTO, the organization is responsible for security, while the rest  of the components of the security community are implemented within the framework  of the EAEU, i.e. the common markets for goods, capital, labor and services, and which includes all CSTO member countries except Tajikistan.

Thus, according to K. Deutsch and his followers, a parallel is drawn between security and integration (Hyde-Price, 2015, p. 29),  and within the framework of the CSTO, enormous institutional work has already  been done in order to build a regional  security community on the territory of the organization. Of course, there are still many unresolved tasks in this field, which also applies to the unsettled situation around Nagorno-Karabakh and the conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Another area that needs to be improved in order to successfully build a regional security community is the existence of a “sense of community” among its citizens (Deutsch, 1957, p. 5). Herewith, the organization needs a sense of common identity and a binding ideology that would unite the citizens of the participating countries, deepen cooperation between them and improve the perception of the CSTO as a single bloc in the eyes of the international community (Nikitina, 2012, p. 51). In this case, the most logical thing is to develop a Eurasian identity that does not contradict the national identities of the peoples of the community, but complements them (Syssoyeva, 2015, p. 298).

Thus, the regional Eurasian security community of the CSTO members has already been institutionalized, and within the framework of the EAEU, its economic component of the four freedoms has been further developed, but the community faces security challenges and the need to forge a common identity. The solution to security problems requires consolidation among the CSTO member states themselves and around the Russian Federation as the guarantor of security in the region. The success of the CSTO peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan has made it evident that such consolidation is possible and effective.

Conclusion

At the beginning of January 2022, Kazakhstan suffered a terrorist attack and an attempt of a coup d’état, followed by mass protests across the country, whose “organization methodology” differs from the previously implemented scenarios of the color revolutions in the post-Soviet area and the world, but still uses their fundamental methods. At the initial peaceful stage, the protest groups included local activists and politically active citizens; at the radical, criminal groups, terrorists and marauders were involved in the protests; at this stage, the radicals had no leader or certain demands, and their goal was to spread terror among the population and destabilize the situation in the country and the entire region afterwards. Under these conditions, when the law enforcement institutions of Kazakhstan could not stabilize the situation by their own means, the current president, K.K. Tokayev, decided to bring the CSTO peacekeeping contingent.

The united troops of the organization, coordinated and deployed to the republic by the Russian Federation in a matter of hours, stood up to protect the institutions of power and strategic state facilities, which made it possible to release the Kazakh military and police forces to successfully implement a counter-terrorist operation. The deployment of the CSTO troops, positively assessed by the expert community, demonstrated the legitimacy of the current government by the allied countries, ensured a military advantage, consolidated the republican order-enforcement forces on the side of the actual president, and allowed the constitutional order to be preserved in the republic.

At the level of state-society relations, the events highlighted a number of weaknesses in the Kazakh statehood, such as stratification and impoverishment of the population, social and economic problems, low level of patriotism, demographic imbalance in the distribution of wealth and confrontation between internal elites, all of which led to the path of the January tragedy. After a failed coup d’état attempt, the transition of power to the actual President,  K.K. Tokayev was completed, a referendum  and early parliamentary elections were held,  and the course to build a “Fair Kazakhstan”  was taken. There were no changes in the country’s foreign policy, and the multi-vector approach remained the basis of Kazakh diplomacy despite the fact that the Russian Federation played a fundamental role in stabilizing the situation and resolving the deep crisis in Kazakhstan.

After a successful peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan, the CSTO ceased to be a “paper tiger” as it proved its peacekeeping effectiveness, and the Russian Federation once again repositioned itself as the guarantor of security in the region. By implementing the operation in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the CSTO prevented a catastrophe at a regional scale and expanded its scope as a defender of constitutional order and legitimate authority in the participating countries. The organization possesses enormous potential in many areas and one of its development paths can be the defense industry integration and the promotion of a common identity. At present, the organization is moving towards building a regional Eurasian security community, and much has already been done to consolidate the CSTO member states along the way.

^{1 Shashkina A. First and successful CSTO Peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan // Sputnik Kazakhstan. January 19, 2022. (In Russian). URL: https://ru.sputnik.kz/20220119/mirotvorcheskaya-missiya-odkb-kazakhstan-19176096.html (accessed: 18.03.2023).}

^{2 Speech of the Head of state Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on an extraordinary session at the Council of collective security of the CSTO // President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. (In Russian). URL: https://www.akorda.kz/ru/vystuplenie-glavy-gosudarstva-kasym-zhomarta-kemelevicha-na-vneocherednoy-sessii-soveta-kollektivnoy-bezopasnosti-odkb-1002245 (accessed: 10.01.2023).}

^{3 January events discussed at Mazhilis // Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan. January 5, 2023. (In Kazakh). URL: https://www.parlam.kz/kk/ mazhilis/news-details/id49908/1/15 (accessed: 08.01.2023). See also: (Shamarov, 2022a, p. 22).}

^{4 President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s address to the people of Kazakhstan // President of the Republic  of Kazakhstan. January 7, 2022. (In Kazakh).  URL: https://www.akorda.kz/kz/prezident-kasym-zhomart-tokaevtyn-kazakstan-halkyna-undeui-70434 (accessed: 10.01.2023).}

^{5 Kazakhstan: Who is setting fire to Central Asia and why? // ISAP Institute of Strategic Analysis and Forecast. January 28, 2022. (In Russian). URL: https://isap.center/ analytics/79 (accessed: 08.01.2023).}

^{6 The formality of this request lies in the low demand for gas in the republic (the consumption of both natural gas and LNG per capita in Kazakhstan is four times lower than in Russia), and its low price, even after the increase. Calculations are made by the author on the basis of databases. See: Gas consumption, 2021 // Our World in Data. URL: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gas-consumption-by-country (accessed: 10.01.2023); Liquefied Petroleum Gases Consumption by Country // Index Mundi. URL: https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=lpg&graph=consumption&display=rank (accessed: 10.01.2023). See also: (Kudaibergenova & Laruelle, 2022, pp. 449—451).}

^{7 Address of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to the people of Kazakhstan // President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. January 7, 2022. (In Kazakh). URL: https://www.akorda.kz/kz/prezident-kasym-zhomart-tokaevtyn-kazakstan-halkyna-undeui-70434 (accessed: 10.01.2023).}

^{8 Speech of the Head of State K.K. Tokayev at the session of the Majilis at the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan // President of the Republic of Kazakhstan.  (In Kazakh). URL: https://www.akorda.kz/kz/memleket-basshysy-kk-tokaevtyn-kazakstan-respublikasynyn-parlamenti-mazhilisinin-otyrysynda-soylegen-sozi-1105319 (accessed: 08.01.2023).}

^{9 Former-head of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan Masimov sentenced to 18 years in prison // Interfax. April 24, 2023. (In Russian).  URL: https://www.interfax.ru/world/897479 (accessed: 16.05.2023).}

^{10 Kazajistán: El partido gobernante gana las elecciones legislativas en Kazajistán con más del 53% de los votos, según los sondeos // RTVE.es. 19.03.2023. URL: https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20230319/partido-gobernante-gana-elecciones-legislativas-kazajistan/2432198.shtml (accessed: 10.04.2023).}

^{11 New Kazakhstan: the road to renewal and revival // President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. March 22, 2022. (In Kazakh). URL: https://www.akorda.kz/kz/memleket-basshysy-kasym-zhomart-tokaevtyn-kazakstan-halkyna-zholdauy-1622340 (accessed: 08.01.2023).}

^{12 Foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation // President of Russia. March 31, 2023. (In Russian). URL: http://kremlin.ru/acts/news/70811 (accessed: 11.04.2023).}

^{13 See: Treaty on community security of 15 May  1992 // Collective Security Treaty Organization. April 26, 2012. (In Russian). URL: https://odkb-csto.org/documents/ documents/dogovor_o_kollektivnoy_bezopasnosti/#loaded (accessed: 18.03.2023); Charter of the Collective Security Treaty Organization of 7 October 2002 // Collective Security Treaty Organization. April 26, 2012. (In Russian). URL: https://odkb-csto.org/documents/documents/ustav_ organizatsii_dogovora_o_kollektivnoy_bezopasnosti_/ #loaded (accessed: 18.03.2023).}

^{14 Two of the eleven interviewers consider the area of the CSTO as an established security community, the rest consider that it has not yet been formed.}

About the authors

Rigina V. Syssoyeva

Author for correspondence.
Email: dra.syssoyeva@outlook.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9216-363X

PhD (International Relations), Postdoc Fellow of the project “Zhas Galym”, Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan; Associate Professor, School of Social and Humanitarian Studies, Astana International University

References