“Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has called for “restraint and de-escalation” in Kazakhstan after Russian troops moved in to quell violent protests in the country.
Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has said his troops should shoot to kill without warning in their efforts to put down the protests, which began over a rise in fuel prices but are driven by wider discontent with the authoritarian government. A Russian-led military alliance of six former Soviet states sent in troops Friday after Tokayev asked for help in putting down the protests.
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Carleton University professor Jeff Sahadeo said he hopes Canada’s embassy is “quite active” in monitoring the situation. “There has been significant violence and clearly significant human rights abuses that have been hard to pin down with the internet down, and with the chaos that’s going on there,” he said.
The situation in the country is both a potential threat and an opportunity for Russia in the region, he said. “There’s a lot of anxiety in Russia now, that if this could happen in Kazakhstan, it could happen in Russia.””