Nazarbayev denied rumors about his flight from Kazakhstan, but in fact said nothing

Nazarbayev's appeal was published on Twitter by his press secretary Aidos Ukibay.

As RIA Novosti notes, the ex-president of Kazakhstan appeared in public for the first time since the end of December and commented on the riots in the country. Nazarbayev said he never left the capital of Kazakhstan, and that he is now on a well-deserved rest after transferring power to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2019.

“At present I am on a well-deserved rest in the capital of Kazakhstan and have not left anywhere”, - Nazarbayev’s statement is quoted by the news agency.

Mass protests in Kazakhstan began at the very beginning of 2022.

The reason was a sharp increase in fuel prices and numerous violations of civil rights in the republic. The first inhabitants of the cities of Zhanaozen and Aktau in the west of the country opposed the doubling of prices for liquefied gas. The protests then spread to other cities. The protesters' speeches affected Alma-Ata the most. More than a thousand people were injured in the clashes, dozens died.

Along with economic problems, the dissatisfaction of the people was also caused by the personality cult of the ex-president of the country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, implanted by the authorities. Angry protesters toppled the statue of Nazarbayev from the pedestal, and Tokayev, under the pressure of public indignation, removed his predecessor from the post of head of the Security Council and dismissed the government.

Worried about the tense situation, President Tokayev turned to the CSTO with a request to send troops of foreign peacekeepers into the country. The redeployment of army units from Russia, Kyrgyzstan and other countries began on January 6. After the intervention of international forces, the storms were suppressed, thousands of protesters were arrested.

After the suppression of protests, the CSTO troops began to withdraw from Kazakhstan. At the same time, Nazarbayev's relatives, who managed to withdraw assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the country, began to leave their positions of power.

First, the National Welfare Fund Samruk-Kazyna on January 15 announced the early termination of the powers of Dimash Dosanov, head of Kaztransoil, and Kairat Sharipbayev, head of QazaqGaz National Company JSC. The first is the husband of Nazarbayev's youngest daughter, Aliya, and the second is called the second husband of the eldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, by the Kazakh media.

Then, Nazarbayev's son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, the husband of his middle daughter Dinara, resigned as head of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs on January 17, and Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga on the same day went on vacation from the post of deputy of the lower house of the country's parliament.

Against the background of protests in the country, they began to dismantle the plates with the name of Nazarbayev.

As indicated correspondents n-channel ORDA, earlier in front of the ex-president of the fund were two signs: "Nursultan Nazarbayev Fund» and «Nursultan Nazarbayev qory», but now on the stone were only traces of the inscriptions.

On our own behalf, we add that the mere fact of Nazarbayev’s televised address two and a half weeks after the start of protests in his native country, after hundreds of victims of street shooting, hundreds of arrests and the introduction of CSTO troops, looks, to put it mildly, strange. Why was the ex-president silent? Where was he? Who forbade him to speak? How does he feel about the arrests and removal from office of his relatives and proxies? ... There are a great many questions, and Nazarbayev did not answer any of them. Which may indicate that he was simply forced to read a speech "about nothing", written not by himself and not by his writers.

By the way, the Head of the Security Council Nazarbayev has not been on any "deserved rest" since he left the presidency in 2019. His position was for life and did not imply a complete removal from public affairs.