BEIJING, January 25./TASS/. Moscow and Beijing have the same opinion as to the reasons behind the crisis in Kazakhstan, Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov told a news conference on Tuesday.
"The escalation of the situation in Kazakhstan came unexpectedly to a certain degree for all countries that are friends and neighbors of Kazakhstan," the diplomat reiterated. Russia and China concur in their view about "the reasons behind the crisis and the ways of getting out of it," Denisov said.
"The reaction of the Russian Federation and that of China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), where our countries are active member nations, was generally timely and very much the same, or we can say the identical," he added.
"This position played an important role in the normalization of the situation in Kazakhstan, since China, together with Russia and the SCO strongly supported the leadership, the president of Kazakhstan in his determination to maximally quickly overcome this crisis situation," the diplomat summed up.
Protests broke out in various Kazakh cities on January 2, escalating into mass riots and attacks against police and military personnel, with government buildings ransacked across several cities a few days later. Subsequently, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev turned to the CSTO requesting assistance, and as a result, the alliance’s peacekeepers were deployed to Kazakhstan. Law and order, Kazakh authorities affirm, was restored to all of the country’s regions by the morning of January 7.