Exiled activist warns of “dangerous” Russian influence

A self-exiled opposition activist has said that Russia’s economic expansion and the high proportion of Russia-sympathisers in the country pose a threat to Kazakhstan’s national security.   

Vladimir Kozlov, who has been living in Ukraine since 2019, told Exclusive.kz in an interview that Russia has long been conducting “creeping economic expansion” in Kazakhstan “with the connivance of people in power”.

He said the expansion was facilitated by the Russia-led Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, of which Kazakhstan is a member.

The organizations, Kozlov said, give Russia an unfair economic advantage in Kazakhstan, allowing it to acquire various important economic assets, such as shares in the uranium industry.

Kozlov also alleged that many Kazakh officials were closely linked to Russia through various business interests.

The activist claimed that “huge amounts of Russian capital” had been transferred to Kazakhstan since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The funds have been used to acquire more economic assets in Kazakhstan, he said.

Kozlov also warned that there was “a considerable proportion” of pro-Russian Kazakh citizens in the country’s western and northern regions, which have majority ethnic Russian populations.

“From the west, up to the north – from Uralsk to Rudnyy, Kostanay, Petropavlovsk – the population of that entire arc is about 80 percent pro-Russian, judging by what is happening there today, and the kind of comments that come out of there [concerning the Russian-Ukrainian war],” Kozlov said.

He described them as “a product of decades of chauvinist brainwashing about Russians’ superiority”, and “ready collaborators with potential [Russian] occupation forces”.

“Those people will never change. It’s dangerous,” he said.

“They want a return of the Soviet Union because it was a time when they were free to feel superior, more intelligent, stronger and so on, to others.”

Kozlov called for a government policy to protect Kazakhstan’s national security and society from pro-Russian influence, similar to the language and other laws adopted by the Baltic states.

Kozlov led the unregistered opposition Alga party until his arrest in 2012 on charges of stirring up social discord and attempting to undermine constitutional order. The charges were linked to his support for the oil workers’ protests in December 2011 in the western town of Zhanaozen.

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