Kazakhstan's largest city was back online and appeared to be returning to normal on Monday as the nation observed a day of mourning after clashes that left dozens dead and the financial hub of 1.8 million people reeling.
The country's former capital, Almaty, had been virtually completely offline since Wednesday, but local and foreign websites were accessible again Monday morning, after the worst unrest in the ex-Soviet republic's independent history.
The Collective Security Treaty Organisation, CSTO, a Moscow-led regional military bloc that has sent peacekeeping troops to the country, is set to hold a online summit on the crisis Monday, with Russian President Vladimir Putin's attendance confirmed by the Kremlin.
AFP saw public transport in Almaty for the first time since protests began this week, leaving strategic government buildings burned and gutted and businesses counting the costs of a looting spree.
A pensioner who was waiting for a bus in the city centre and gave only her first name, Lyudmila said she was alerted to the internet's reappearance by a messenger call from relatives in Ukraine.
She said that they had no idea that they were back online.
She told AFP that injured soldiers had been dragged into the courtyard of the apartment building where she lived for emergency treatment during the clashes on Wednesday night.
Kazakhstan has described the violence in Almaty as an attack by terrorist groups and expressed displeasure at the foreign media coverage of the events, which began with protests over a fuel price hike in the west of the country on January 2.
The foreign ministry said on Monday that foreign media reports had created the false impression that the government of Kazakhstan had been targeting peaceful protestors. The foreign ministry said that security forces had been engaged with violent mobs who were committing brazen acts of terror.
The authoritarian government has struggled to establish its own narrative.
On Sunday evening, the information ministry retracted a statement that appeared in an officially run Telegram channel earlier in the day, which said more than 164 people had died in the unrest.
Two private websites that had reported the news said the information ministry had told them the statement was a result of a technical mistake. Officials previously said 26 armed criminals had been killed and 16 security officers had died.
In total, 5,800 people have been detained for questioning, according to a statement by the presidency on Sunday.
Nur-Sultan, the city that replaced Almaty as capital in 1997 and renamed in honor of 81-year-old founding president Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019, saw little unrest.
The crisis comes after talks between Russia and the US take place on Monday after a working dinner on Sunday evening between Moscow and the West over fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has ruled out any concessions at the talks.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev thanked the Moscow-led CSTO for responding to his request for help and sending a delegation of 2,500 troops to the country.
Tokayev says the deployment will be temporary, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Friday that once Russians are in your house, it's sometimes very difficult to get them to leave while the precise contours of the political crisis that has engulfed Kazakhstan are unclear, it is clear that the ruling elite has been roiled.
On Saturday, the authorities announced the arrest of Karim Masimov, a high-profile Nazarbayev ally who was dismissed from his post as security committee chief at the height of the unrest.
Nazarbayev, who was widely regarded as holding the strings in the oil-rich Central Asian country despite stepping down from the presidency in 2019, has not spoken in public since the crisis began.
On Saturday, Nazarbayev's press secretary said on Twitter that Nazarbayev was in direct contact with Tokayev and called for Kazakhs to rally around the president.
Nazarbayev hand-picked Tokayev as his successor after calling time on more than a quarter-century as head of state.
Tokayev's spokesman said he was independent and that he was taking decisions. I'm not running to consultants.