Russia deployed troops to Kazakhstan to crush anti-government protests that erupted this week over rising fuel prices. DC reflects on anniversary of Jan. 6.
Summary
Russian paratroopers arrived in Kazakhstan, the largest and wealthiest Central Asian republic, Thursday to quell anti-government protests that have swept the energy-rich nation and left dozens dead. The government resigned and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared a state of emergency.
- Tokayev, who took over from longtime dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019, requested Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) “peacekeepers” be deployed to restore order in their first military intervention. Former Soviet states constitute the CSTO (Russia’s version of NATO).
- Tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets after the government removed fuel price caps. Protestors stormed government buildings in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and overran the airport.
- Dozens of protestors have been killed in addition to 12 police officers, with 353 security personnel injured.
- The protests have intensified into an attack on Kazakhstan’s authoritarian government, which has ruled Kazakhstan since it achieved independence in 1991.
- Before the protests, Kazakhstan was regarded as a “pillar of political and economic stability in an unstable region.” This is the third series of pro-democracy protests to erupt in a former Soviet state in the last decade, after Ukraine (2014) and Belarus (2020).
- This intervention comes as Vladimir Putin conducts a massive military buildup on the border with Ukraine, raising fears of an imminent full-scale invasion.
- Today is the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters.
- The Washington Post made the case that “Republicans became the party of Trump’s election lie after January 6.”
- Former President Jimmy Carter wrote in the New York Times about his fears for America’s democracy one year after the January 6 riots.
- Politico interviewed several members of Congress who were at the Capitol on January 6 about their experiences and how the attack has affected Congress.
- The editors of National Review, on the “anniversary of a disgrace,” condemned Trump and the “Stop the Steal” mob’s actions as indefensible, comparing them to Democratic attacks on the legitimacy of the 2004 and 2016 elections and anti-democratic left-wing mobs from 2011, 2018 and 2020.
- In the Wall Street Journal, former George W. Bush advisor Karl Rove argued that Republicans have a “duty to condemn the riot” and those who try and whitewash it away.
- In contrast, Breitbart’s main takeaway from the January 6 riots is that it has become “Dems’ Holy Day” and most of their coverage focuses on over-the-top rhetoric from leading progressives like Kamala Harris.
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
