The impact of Russian soft power in Kazakhstan: creating an enabling environment for cooperation between Nur-Sultan and Moscow

Agents, multilateral institutions, and fundamental institutional change in international society: The case of Russia’s peacekeeping policy

“…132 Despite this claim, however, the Kazakh government has offered little evidence that terrorists were involved in the protests, and some analysts have pointed to the political wrangling and rivalry between current president Tokayev and former president Nursultan Nazarbayev as an underlying cause of the so-called Bloody January. 133 On the face of it, the CSTO's intervention in Kazakhstan differed from Russian peacekeeping operations in the 1990s in some respects. As Vladimir Socor points out, the CSTO mission's central objective was to 'restore public order' , and the mission swiftly withdrew from the country once the internal unrest was quelled, thereby avoiding 'Russia's dismal habit of turning peacekeeping into de facto occupation' .…”

“…To begin with, Russia's concern for its own great power status was among the key motivations for this military intervention. 136 At play here was Russia's great power thinking. Secondly, the CSTO's behaviour in this incident departed from and challenged some of the reproducing practices of the primary institution of peacekeeping.…”