INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Kazakhstan, which shares the world's longest continuous border with Russia, has long balanced its status as Moscow's most trusted ally in
ex-Soviet Central Asia with attempts to maintain cordial ties with the West.But Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, combined with Russian
perceptions that the Kremlin secured the Kazakh regime during a political crisis earlier this year, has turned that balancing act into a
high-wire walk, experts say.The most recent sign of tensions came at an economic forum in Russia's second city St
Petersburg last week, as Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev discussed world politics with his Russian counterpart Vladimir
Putin.Tokayev reiterated his country's refusal to recognize what he called "quasi-state" entities in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been
the type of figure we are no longer used to seeing (in Russia)
is this ingratitude?'One of the most strident critics of Kazakhstan's neutral stance on Ukraine has been Margarita Simonyan, the
out recognizing the territories Moscow calls the Luhansk and Donetsk "People's Republics." Not long after, Simonyan asked her social media
followers why Russia had "saved" Kazakhstan during a historic bout of unrest at the start of the year.Simonyan's husband, television show
presenter Tigran Keosayan, went further in April, unleashing a tirade against Kazakhstan's leadership that was so vicious the foreign
Collective Security Treaty Organization, bolstered Tokayev's position at the expense of a powerful political clan tied to his long-ruling
predecessor, who was seen by some as using the crisis to usurp the president.'A more supportive position?'In an interview with Russian media
earlier this month, Tokayev pushed back against the idea that Kazakhstan had been saved by the intervention.But Maximilian Hess, a fellow
with the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, told AFP that the Kremlin is unlikely to see it that way.He said that Kazakhstan may
if both sides offered other explanations."There are significant links between the Russian and Kazakh business elites that Putin can lean on
"cannot jeopardize its core national interests," Nargis Kassenova, a senior fellow at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and
Eurasian Studies, told AFP.That includes territorial integrity, "hence the non-recognition of quasi-states," Kassenova said, as well as
avoiding the deep economic isolation that Russia has fallen into due to unprecedented Western sanctions.Dosym Satpayev, a political analyst
based in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty, said Tokayev's comments on Ukraine at the forum were inevitably addressed to a domestic, as well
as foreign, audience.Among Kazakhstan's diverse population of 19 million, which includes large Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian parts,
Moscow's hyper-aggressive foreign policy has attracted both support and opposition, he said.Tokayev is also trying to bridge a "legitimacy
gap" after questions about his own role in the violence in January, Satpayev told AFP.For his part, the Kazakh leader appeared intent on
smoothing the hubbub over his comments to Putin during an appearance at another economic forum in Qatar.Speaking in English to Bloomberg TV
on Tuesday, career diplomat Tokayev said Putin was a "staunch ally" with whom he had a "very nice meeting" immediately after the St
