MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. Moscow and Washington will certainly discuss the situation in Kazakhstan but it will hardly influence the agenda of the upcoming security guarantee talks next week as the Kazakh developments will not alter Moscow’s stance in this sphere, Director of the Institute for US and Canadian Studies Valery Garbuzov told TASS on Wednesday.
"I believe that it [the developments in Kazakhstan] will hardly throw into question the negotiations because the agenda of the talks has been formulated. Of course, the situation in Kazakhstan will be discussed in one way or another. It is not clear, of course, in which scope all this will be [discussed] but I do not think that the situation in Kazakhstan will manage to overshadow all the other issues," the expert pointed out.
Russia earlier published a draft agreement between Moscow and Washington on security guarantees, which stipulated a possible refusal by the United States to develop bilateral military cooperation with former Soviet republics. Moscow also wants to ensure that NATO stops its eastward expansion, in particular, to the post-Soviet space countries.
The expert said he was certain that the situation in Kazakhstan would not influence Moscow’s policy in the security sphere.
"I do not think that it [the situation in Kazakhstan] will throw into question the general Russian stance on what the policy should be between Russia and NATO. I don’t think that the developments in Kazakhstan, and we can presume that similar events may take place in other CIS regions, will throw into question Russia’s general stance. I think it will remain the same," the expert pointed out.
The negotiations on security guarantees between Russia and the United States will take place in Geneva on January 10.
Protests have been raging in Kazakhstan for the fourth day in a row. On January 2, crowds took to the streets in the cities of Zhanaozen and Aktau in the Mangistau region in the country’s southwest, protesting against fuel price hikes. Two days later, riots erupted in Almaty (in the country’s southeast) where police used stun grenades to disperse crowds and also in other cities, in particular, in Atyrau and Aktobe (in the west), Uralsk (in the northwest), Taraz, Shymkent and Kyzylorda (in the south), Karaganda (in the northeast) and even in the capital of Nur-Sultan.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has declared a state of emergency in the Mangistau and Almaty regions and also in Almaty and Nur-Sultan for two weeks. On January 5, the head of the Kazakh state dismissed the government. Its members continue discharging their duties until a new Cabinet is approved.