The unrest in Kazakhstan has led to deaths and injuries among law enforcement officers, and has threatened to crack down ruthlessly on protests ongoing across the country.
As head of state, I plan to act as hard as possible," said Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in a televised address on Wednesday afternoon. This is a question of the safety of our country. He said he had no plans to flee the country's capital and that he is certain that the people will support me.
On Wednesday, Tokayev accepted the resignation of the government and introduced a state of emergency in several provinces in an effort to claw back control over the situation, but the moves did not deter angry crowds.
The protests started in the west of the country at the weekend, sparked by a rise in fuel prices, but have spread quickly and have taken both the country s authorities and international observers by surprise.
In Almaty, the country's commercial capital and largest city, there were violent clashes between police and demonstrators, and the mayoralty was set on fire, with smoke and flames visible from several floors of the imposing building.
The crowds tried to storm government buildings in other cities, including Aktobe in the west of the country. There were reports and videos of police cars set on fire and security vehicles seized by the crowd.
The authorities are trying to calm things down, with a mix of promises and threats, but so far it is not working, said Dosym Satpayev, an Almaty-based political analyst. There will be imitations of dialogue but the regime will respond with force because they have no other tools. Tokayev blamed the protests on demonizing people who want to undermine the stability and unity of our society. Authorities shut down mobile internet and blocked access to messaging apps, and on Wednesday afternoon the internet went down across much of the country. Authorities said army units had been brought into Almaty to restore order.
As another country neighbouring Russia succumbs to political unrest, images of police being overpowered by protesters are likely to cause alarm in the Kremlin. The economic union between Kazakhstan and Russia is part of the long border.
The Russian foreign ministry said that they hope for the earliest possible normalisation of the situation in the country, with which Russia is linked by relations of strategic partnership and alliance through fraternal, human contacts. Vladimir Putin's spokeswoman said it was important that no foreign countries interfered in Kazakhstan.
A rise in the price of liquefied petroleum gas LPG used by many to power their cars was a cause of protests, particularly in the west of Kazakhstan. They began over the weekend in the oil city of Zhanaozen, where police fired on protesters killing at least 16 people in December 2011.
The protest was not helped by the fact that the price would be fixed at a lower level and that anger was not narrowly focused on LPG prices.
There is discontent with Tokayev, president since 2019, and his 81-year-old benefactor, Nursultan Nazarbayev. A former Soviet-era communist boss who became Kazakhstan's first president after independence in 1991 and ruled until 2019, Nazarbayev still has immense power behind the scenes. A small elite has become extremely wealthy during his rule over the resource-rich country, while many ordinary Kazakhs live in poverty.
Nazarbayev and his family have monopolised all sectors from banking to roads to gas. These protests are about corruption, said 55-year-old Zauresh Shekenova, who has been protesting in Zhanaozen since Sunday.
She said that the increase in gas prices was the real cause of the protests, but the real cause is poor living conditions of people, high prices, joblessness, corruption.
Tokayev declared a state of emergency in large parts of the country overnight, but this did not stop crowds coming onto the streets on Wednesday.
A group of about 70 activists had set off on Tuesday night to the centre of Almaty but many of them were held at a police station for several hours, according to Darkhan Sharipov, an activist from the civil society movement Wake Up, Kazakhstan.
People are sick of corruption and nepotism, and the authorities don't listen to people We want President Tokayev to carry out real political reforms, or to go away and hold fair elections, he said.
There is widespread discontent in the country, but the cleansing of the political playing field over many years means there are no high-profile opposition figures around which a protest movement could unite. The protests seem largely directionless instead.
There are some local figures but nobody who could unify forces across the country, though with time they could appear, said Satpayev.
In their three decades of independence, the five former Soviet Central Asian republics have been largely devoid of protest, with the exception of Kyrgyzstan, which has had several revolutions. Autocrats have cracked down on any sign of protest and the other four have been ruled by autocrats. Nazarbayev was once considered the most popular of these rulers, but over time the lack of economic progress or political reform has resulted in rising discontent.