Kazakhstan on Saturday arrested Karim Masimov, the former head of counterintelligence and anti-terror agency on serious charges of plotting a coup against the government.
This detention comes in the wake of violent street protests in Kazakhstan over the past few days that saw government buildings set ablaze and dozens of deaths.
Notably, president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has blamed foreign-backed terrorists for the massive unrest in the ordinary stable central Asian nation.
On Friday, the President had given a shoot-to-kill order to the country’s security forces.
These protests have been held to be the most widespread in the former Soviet Republic since its independence in the 1990s after the dissolution of the USSR.
The unrest began soon after the government raised fuel prices, especially the liquefied petroleum gas that is widely used as vehicle fuel. In Almaty, the demonstrators even seized the airport briefly before armed forces took back the control leaving dozens dead.
The failure of Kazakh security forces to quell the violent upsurge prompted the president to seek the Russian-dominated CSTO’s help of which Kazakhstan is also a member.
By Thursday, planeloads of Russian elite airborne units were witnessed flying into Kazakhstan. Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Shukhrat Nuryshev said 2,500 CSTO peacekeepers would be deployed, reports Associated Press.
Kazakh media later confirmed the presence of over 2500 troops from CSTO in Almaty with the USA warning Russia against rights violations and taking control of the former Soviet republic’s institutions by troop deployment, reported the Straits Times.