During the call, which is said to have been carried out by Russian pranksters who use the aliases ‘Vovan and Lexus’ and in which David Cameron is shown talking on his mobile, the British Foreign Secretary is heard saying: “Kazakhstan are convinced that Putin wants a slice of the north of Kazakhstan”.

A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement, “… We made public the fact that this call happened weeks ago, to do the right thing and make sure others were warned of the risk at the earliest opportunity. The foreign secretary understood this was a private call with a Ukrainian politician [ex-President Poroshenko]”.

David Cameron is “regretting his mistake”, the British Foreign Office said in the statement. Thus, it turns out that words about Kazakhstan being convinced that “Putin wants a slice of the north of Kazakhstan” were actually spoken during that call.

Such a view can be construed as a factual reflection of the viewpoint of the international community on the underpinning of the situation between Russia and Kazakhstan amid the war in Ukraine. But the question is how much does it reflect the actual state of things in the context of this matter.

For example, in a recent interview with Vasil Golovanov, Dmitro Gordon, a prominent Ukrainian journalist, interviewer, and politician, while commenting on the expansionist public speech by State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy concerning Kazakhstan, suggested that the leader of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev would do well to keep in mind the words of the Russian MP when meeting with the Kremlin master, Vladimir Putin.

In his speech the Russian MP holding a high-ranking position within the legislative branch in Russia, who is also known as having been the head of the Russian delegations to the Parliamentary Assemblies of both the OSCE and the Council of Europe, said that Russia ‘will cease to exist’, if Moscow loses the war in Ukraine. He further stressed if Russia does not ‘close the topic’ of Ukraine, there would be problems ‘with Kazakhstan’, and with some other post-Soviet countries.

The Duma Vice-Speaker continued: “Look at what is happening today in Kazakhstan in terms of building a certain Kazakh state. Look at what kind of national mythology is blooming there regarding independence, regarding the transition to the Latin alphabet”. Pyotr Tolstoy added: “They forgot Alma-Ata (Almaty) is the former city of Verny, our Russian Cossack fortress”.

It would seem, this should have led to a wave of indignation among not only the Kazakhstani journalistic community but also the socio-political groups in Kazakhstan. But it appears that in fact the above words of Tolstoy induced stronger reactions from outside the country, and even in Russia, rather than in Kazakhstan itself. The journalists and public figures from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Turkey did not fail to begin protecting Kazakhstan and the ethnic Kazakhs against the verbal attacks and territorial claims by Russian MP. They expressed their views explicitly and without........

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