Eadaily.com, a Russian pro-Kremlin media outlet, in an article by Alan Pukhayev entitled ‘In Kazakhstan, they want to abandon the shared history of Kazakhstan and Russia’ said: “Agents of foreign influence in the Kazakh government are conscientiously fulfilling their task of creating a historical and mental separation from Russia. The latest thing that the Kazakh authorities have done is the renaming of Yuri Gagarin Avenue in Almaty into Yermek Serkebayev Avenue. [In this regard,] I would like to recall a statement made by President Tokayev at the Central Asia-Russia summit in October 2022. “Our countries are destined to be together. We must protect our shared history and create a unified future for the well-being of our people. Stability and security in each of our countries have a direct influence on the development of the region”, he said.

However, it seems that the ‘Harvard boys’ in the Kazakh government do not agree with him. For them, what the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Daniel Rosenblum, says is much more important”.

Those reproaches by the Russian pro-Kremlin media outlet seem to be leveled at Yerbolat Dosayev, Mayor of Almaty, a city, where that avenue is. Experience shows that this kind of verbal attack by the Russian media on high-ranking Kazakh officials does not remain without consequences. Here are some examples.

On January 11, 2022, President Tokayev appointed Askar Umarov as Minister of Information and Social Development of Kazakhstan. The Tsargrad TV reacted to this with a series of materials describing the latter as an ‘open Russophobe’. This Russian media outlet also called President Tokayev’s decision to appoint him minister ‘an outrageous gesture’. Other Russian media picked up its initiative. They were joined by some of Moscow’s officials and Russian politicians. There was a lot of noise. Some Russian politicians, experts, and journalists went so far as to describe Kazakhstan’s Minister of Information, Askar Umarov, as ‘a person with nazi and chauvinist views towards Russians’. He once, according to Russian media said, while addressing Kazakhstani Russians, the following: “You do not forget that you are an imposed diaspora here, not autochthons, and be thankful that your rights are respected, and no one is driving you away from here, as it is the case with colonizers in........

© Eurasia Review