NUR-SULTAN, January 19. /TASS/. The Russian contingent of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) peacekeeping forces fulfilled its mission in Kazakhstan in full compliance with the principles of international law, Russia’s Ambassador to the Central Asian republic Alexey Borodavkin said on Wednesday.
"I want to thank you for your impeccable fulfillment of the peacekeeping mission in full compliance with the CSTO directive documents and the generally-recognized norms and principles of international law," the ambassador said at a ceremony of seeing off the Russian peacekeeping contingent held in the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan.
The Russian envoy congratulated the peacekeepers on the successful fulfillment of their mission for assisting the allied state of Kazakhstan in normalizing the situation in the Central Asian republic and repelling gangster and terrorist aggression directed from the outside.
"The CSTO peacekeepers brilliantly and fully accomplished the tasks set by the political leadership of the organization’s member states and helped rout the terrorists and restore the Constitutional order in Kazakhstan," Borodavkin pointed out.
In the course of deploying and carrying out the operation, the Russian peacekeepers "demonstrated exceptional promptness and the highest efficiency, acted in a coordinated manner with the Kazakh military and law-enforcement personnel," showed interoperability and high results of combat operations, the envoy stressed.
"Our foes will have to remember well that they will be left ‘toothless,’ if they attempt ‘to bite’ Russia and our allies," the ambassador said.
In the course of the operation uneasy from all aspects, in particular, in the process of helping Russian nationals return home aboard military transport planes, the Russian military and diplomats acted in a well-coordinated manner, Borodavkin said.
Mass riots
Protests erupted in several Kazakh cities on January 2, escalating into mass riots with government buildings getting ransacked in several cities a few days later. They were accompanied by attacks on the police, military and governance bodies in many cities of the country, primarily, in Almaty.
In compliance with a decision by the CSTO Collective Security Council made on January 6, 2022, the organization’s collective peacekeeping forces were sent to Kazakhstan for a limited period to stabilize and normalize the situation in the Central Asian republic after Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev turned to the Russia-led security bloc for assistance. The peacekeeping contingent comprised units of the armed forces of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The Russian peacekeepers in Kazakhstan were assigned the task of protecting key strategic facilities in Almaty. On January 13, the CSTO began the gradual withdrawal of its collective peacekeeping forces from Kazakhstan. Law and order, Kazakh authorities affirm, was restored to all of the country’s regions.
According to the data of the Kazakh Prosecutor General’s Office, over 4,500 people were injured in the mass riots and 225 bodies were delivered to morgues.