The president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has responded in hardline fashion to a popular uprising. He has ordered a security crackdown, called protesters terrorists and said those who take to the streets deserve to be wiped out. Tokayev has cryptically hinted that foreigners are behind the unrest.
It is unsurprising that the veteran politician and diplomat has taken a leaf from the Kremlin's conspiratorial playbook. Tokayev spent his formative years in the service of the Soviet foreign ministry. After graduating from school in Almaty the scene of the worst disturbances this week he studied foreign relations at a Moscow state institute.
He mastered the language, joined the far-east division of the Soviet foreign ministry and spent much of the 1980s at Moscow's embassy in Beijing. He became an adviser to Nursultan Nazarbayev, leader of the newly independent Kazakhstan when the USSR fell apart.
It was Toyakyev who persuaded other nations to recognise Kazakhstan diplomatically. China was particularly enthusiastic. Narzabayev rewarded Tokayev by making him deputy foreign minister, as well as interpreter-cum adviser on official delegations to Beijing.
Tokayev became prime minister in 1999 and foreign minister in 2002. As a staunch Nazarbayev loyalist, he was responsible for improving relations with Kazakhstan's three key partners Russia, China and the US. He met with US envoys regularly and helped Kazakhstan relinquish its inherited communist-era nuclear bombs.
Some of Tokayev's private comments now seem ironic. He told the US ambassador a popular Orange Revolution of the kind seen in other post-Soviet republics was unlikely in Kazakhstan at a lunch in 2005. According to a leaked US cable, he claimed that the country was committed to political reform and decentralisation.
Further high positions followed. He became a speaker and then chairman of the senate of Kazakhstan. In 2019, when Nazarbayev retired formally, Tokayev succeeded him as president. Two-and-a-half years into the job, he is facing a crisis graver than anything seen by his authoritarian predecessor.
Tokayev's decision to invite Russian troops to restore order reverses years in which Kazakhstan has cautiously sought to tread an independent foreign policy, triangulating between Moscow, Washington and Beijing. Relations with the west will be cooler from now on. Those with Russia suddenly appear more fragile and subservient.
Tokayev's family connections are linked to Soviet history. His father, a writer of detective stories, fought in the Second World War the Great Patriotic War, as Russia calls it. His mother was a university language teacher. He is divorced with a son, Timur. His hobbies include reading novels, memoirs, and books about politics.
According to his official biography, Tokayev is now 68 and has written 10 books on international relations. He also supports a healthy lifestyle and was the head of the table tennis association in Kazakhstan.