Opinion: New year revolution

Turmoil in Kazakhstan may refocus minds in Russia and the US as the two sides seek to resolve tensions over Ukraine

Averting a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine has preoccupied US and EU leaders for the past two months, but few in Washington, Brussels or even Moscow would have expected to see Russian forces landing in Kazakhstan this week.

The violent protests gripping the second-largest CIS oil producer must have alarmed Russian president Vladimir Putin. Kazakhstan and Russia share an authoritarian post-Soviet order with a veneer of stage-managed democratic institutions and energy-dominated economies that allow their rulers to distribute enough of their income to keep most of their citizens placid most of the time.

In theory, such regimes appear stable enough that Putin can point to civil unrest in the US and Europe and pronounce the end of globalisation underpinned by a set of liberal values. In reality, authoritarian energy producers are prone to instability all over the world — the concentration of power, wealth and natural resources in a few hands breeds dissatisfaction even within government ranks. Energy transition, with its reliance on critical minerals, will not change that.

The immediate cause of protests in Kazakhstan is the increase in the price of LPG used as motor fuel — a decision prompted by the need to cut energy subsidies as part of meeting the country's carbon neutrality pledge. But this is hardly an energy transition tale of woe. Other countries in Asia and Europe recently have had to deal with high energy prices. But while elected governments fear being punished at the ballot box for high energy prices, authoritarian producers changing the social compact of subsidised energy face a more immediate risk.

Kazakh president Khassym-Jomart Tokayev blames the unrest on "external forces" and "terrorists", a pretext for inviting the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation to send troops to deal with the unrest. Moscow's rapid reaction — and its swift response to the Belarus protests in 2020 — shows it wants to prevent an Arab Spring-like democracy domino effect in its neighbourhood. But a brutal clampdown of a popular uprising in Kazakhstan may add to the discomfort of US and European leaders, given their already strained relations with Putin.

You say you want a resolution

Pro-Kremlin media, naturally, blame the US for sparking another "colour revolution" in the former Soviet space. But instability in Kazakhstan is as unwelcome in Washington as it is in Moscow, and not only because the central Asian country plays host to Chevron and other US firms. Democracy may be, nominally, at the forefront of US president Joe Biden's foreign policy, but his administration has courted Kazakhstan as a partner on Afghanistan, climate and reducing dependence on China for critical minerals.

Senior US and Russian officials were already preparing to meet next week over Ukraine, with Washington signalling, for the first time since the Soviet Union collapsed, that it is ready to discuss the Kremlin's demand for non-interference on its western borders. The Biden White House is wary of creating an impression of agreeing to a sphere of influence for Russia in the former Soviet space. But the so far muted US reaction to this week's events suggests a tacit acceptance of the Kazakh crisis response. Reaching a resolution with Putin over Ukraine will require a more difficult balancing act.