This is an interesting development

memories of the prague spring, 1968

Kazakhstan to Putin: Pound sand

Vladimir Putin’s miscalculations in Ukraine have multiplied in the last two days. In the first place, the Russian army appears to be struggling to overcome the unexpectedly fierce resistance from fully mobilized Ukrainians, despite massive numerical and technological advantages. At the same time, allies whom Putin assiduously courted over the last several years have done an abrupt about-face, blasting Putin publicly over his naked aggression in Europe.

None of these backfires is more surprising than in Kazakhstan. Putin just got done rescuing President Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev from a serious uprising six weeks ago, sending Russian army formations to put down demonstrators in Almaty. With his invasion bogging down, Putin asked Tokayev for more troops to support the Ukraine invasion.

Not only did Tokayev refuse, he went further in refusing to recognize the “independent” states Putin set up in the Donbas ….

That’s a stunning flip for Tokayev, and a real problem for Putin on an entirely different front. Kazakhstan is a strategic ally for Putin in Central Asia; its size and position allows Putin to flex his muscle from China to Iran and Pakistan. If the invasion of Ukraine has forced the scales to fall from Tokayev’s eyes about Putin’s ambitions for former Soviet republics, Putin’s reach and influence just took a very large hit in an area that might matter to him more than his western frontier, strategically speaking. And it’s tough to imagine that Tokayev fails to recognize the threat that Putin represents to those former Soviet republics, even with Putin’s rescue last month.

Nor is Tokayev the only friendly country that Putin has alienated with this move. Hungary*

and Czech Republic leaders had been sympathetic to Putin and growing more restive within the EU, offering Putin a chance to split the Western alliance. Those efforts also came to an abrupt halt yesterday:

… Two until now major pro-Russian voices in the European Union, Czech President Milos Zeman and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, didn’t mince their words in criticizing Moscow’s most aggressive action since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Their countries experienced comparable brutality — the Czech Republic, as part of Czechoslovakia, in 1968 and Hungary in 1956.

…Until just days ago, Zeman was insisting that the Russians wouldn’t attack Ukraine because “they aren’t lunatics to launch an operation that would be more damaging for them than beneficial.”

“I admit I was wrong,” he said Thursday.

Orban was no less direct, and Bulgaria and Romania followed suit …

*I would hardly call Hungary soft on Russia, but never mind — Ed