MOSCOW, January 13. /TASS/. The way the West, including the OSCE, reacted to the latest events in Kazakhstan was terrible and shameful, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Channel One’s Great Game program on Thursday.
"Of course, it was a frightful experience to see pogroms, homes set on fire, police officers’ heads cut off, and the way the rioters and terrorists treated journalists. Also, I found it still more fearsome, at least from the standpoint of my professional tasks, to see the way the West reacted to all this, including the reaction of the very same OSCE, which positions itself as one of the key actors in European security affairs. First, that organization reacted to the events in Kazakhstan in a grossly inadequate way, but then eventually tried to call upon one and all for the observance of the rights of journalists, human rights, and so on. It was a real disgrace. In such situations the root causes of what has happened must be exposed," Lavrov said.
Protests erupted in several Kazakh cities on January 2, escalating into mass riots with government buildings getting ransacked in several cities, in the first place, in Almaty, a few days later. The ensuing violence left scores of people injured, with fatalities also being reported. Subsequently, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev turned to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) requesting assistance from the Russia-led bloc. As a result, peacekeepers were deployed to Kazakhstan. Law and order, Kazakh authorities affirm, have been restored to all of the country’s regions by now.