Shafaq News/ A Russian-led military alliance said that it would send peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan at the invitation of the country’s president to help put down a growing protest movement there.
The current chairman of the alliance, the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said that the troops would be stationed there only “for a limited period.”
He did not give information about the number of soldiers that would move.
The Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, invited Russia on Wednesday. Calling the demonstrators “a band of international terrorists,” he said he was turning to Russia’s version of NATO, called the Collective Security Treaty Organization, to “help Kazakhstan overcome this terrorist threat.”
On Sunday, the protests started in the oil town of Zhanaozen, after the government doubled the cost of liquefied petroleum gas — used to fuel vehicles in Kazakhstan — to about 100 tenge, or 22 cents, per liter.
By the time the government announced on Tuesday that it would rescind the price increase, the protests had spread across the country, with broader demands for increased political representation and improved social benefits.
