Political Scientist: Putin’s Never Faced Anything Like This Before

It’s difficult to overestimate Tokayev’s gesture.

The speech of the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in the Kazakh language at the Forum of Interregional Cooperation with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin is a gesture that is difficult to overestimate, says Russian political scientist Arkady Dubnov.

“Putin has never faced anything like this before when paying visits to friendly capitals of the CIS member states. The local leaders always addressed him exclusively in Russian, in the language of Big Brother, this tradition seemed unbreakable, and it seemed it couldn’t be any other way... This routine of the post-Soviet protocol was broken: yesterday, the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, summing up the results of Putin’s visit to Astana, he first addressed the audience in the Kazakh language speaking in front of missions and journalists,” Dubnov wrote on Friday on Telegram.

He noted that Tokayev’s speech took the Russians by surprise.

“It’s worth watching the video to get this big surprise of Putin and the members of his mission with the ‘Kazakh entry’. They rushed to look for the headphones on the table and behind their backs, which were clearly not by chance there... Tokayev forced them to listen to his speech in translation at the beginning. It was a gesture that can hardly be overestimated. The Kazakh president, who initiated the creation of an Organization for the Study of the Russian Language in the CIS member states, which was greeted with enthusiasm in Moscow, immediately made it clear that Kazakhstan intends to follow an independent language policy, where the Russian language is honoured and respected. Still, the spread of the national language of the Kazakhs remains the main thing. And this is unlikely to be hindered by the fact that Tokayev himself is a graduate of MGIMO, which Putin recalled more than once, saying that we know that you, Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich, our man... By the way, this time Putin failed to pronounce the colleague's middle name correctly again. So, yes, Tokayev is ours, but Kazakh first of all. The Kremlin will have to get used to this,” Dubnov said.