02Pilot said:In reply to tuna55 :
I don't understand the reasoning. Russia is not going to annex Kazakhstan. It had a friendly government and Russian forces were invited in. Puppet state? Maybe, but without the uprising Russia would have been perfectly happy to leave well enough alone.
NATO isn't going to do anything in Ukraine regardless, because it is a defensive alliance. If any direct action (including supplying weapons and intelligence) is going to be taken, it's going to be the US and possibly an ally or two, not NATO, and not the EU. And Russia is not going to annex Ukraine either - the risk calculus makes it far more costly than Russia is prepared to bear. They want a compliant buffer state, the same way they used the Warsaw Pact states as buffers against the West in the 50s and early 60s, not a prolonged occupation facing an insurgency.
The WSJ commentary seems to think the same thing I was trying to say.
BY YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
"
To Kazakhs, who pride themselves on the Kazakh khanate that emerged at the breakup of the Golden Horde in the 15th century and lasted until its absorption into the Russian Empire four centuries later, the implication was clear: their country’s independence and territorial integrity would only be guaranteed as long as
a loyal ruler like Mr. Nazarbayev exercised control.
“It’s a sword of Damocles that hangs over the heads of the Kazakhs because they know that, at any point, Russia could send in its little green men,” said Ms. Mallin- son.
Lawmakers from the pro-Putin United Russia party have repeatedly made the point. “Kazakhstan never existed. The territory of Kazakhstan is a huge gift from Russia and the Soviet Union,” Russian parliament member Vyacheslav Nikonov said on a Russian TV talk show in December 2020. This month, another lawmaker from United Russia, Sultan Hamzaev, called for a referendum on reunifying Kazakhstan with “its historic motherland Russia.”
Andrey Kortunov, director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council think tank in Moscow, said nobody in the Kremlin is currently seeking to annex parts of Kazakhstan. Moscow’s main goal, just as during the crisis in Belarus in 2020 and in Ukraine in late 2013, is to ensure the survival of an allied regime and stave off a so-called color revolution."
