As Kazakhstan’s Leader Asserts Independence, Did Putin Just Say,...

As Kazakhstan’s Leader Asserts Independence, Did Putin Just Say, ‘Not So Fast’?
August 30, 2014 - 1:10pm, by David Trilling

A few days after President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Kazakhstan could withdraw from the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, Russia’s president appeared to threaten Kazakhstan, stressing publicly that Kazakhstan benefits by casting its lot with Russia and fanning suspicions that all is not well between the two leaders.

Speaking at an annual, town-hall style meeting with university students and young professors on August 29, Vladimir Putin fielded a question about Kazakhstan’s post-Nazarbayev future and the likelihood of a “Ukraine scenario”—presumably, a power vacuum and civil conflict.

Because it is widely assumed that the questions are either vetted or planted, the exchange has invited plenty of scrutiny. While Putin’s answer was full of seeming praise for Nazarbayev, it also cast doubt on Kazakhstan’s durability as an independent state—a sensitive issue in Kazakhstan after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69771