Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke by telephone with his Kazakh counterpart Thursday, urging a quick end to a week of increasingly violent protests that have rocked the Central Asian nation.
The call came amid reports that dozens of protesters and at least 18 security officers had been killed overnight in street clashes, Kazakh officials told The Associated Press. Video of the protests showed what appeared to be security forces backed by armored trucks firing down a street in the country’s main city of Almaty.
Russian paratroopers, dispatched as part of an emergency regional peacekeeping mission requested by the Kazakhstan regime, were said to be already working to help tamp down the crisis, which is considered the most serious challenge to the authoritarian regime’s rule in three decades since the country broke away from the disintegrating Soviet Union.
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The deployment also includes troops from Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Protesters were said to be out in force again Thursday in Almaty, a day after they broke into the residence of embattled President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and the office of the mayor. Aigerim Tuleuzhanova, a representative of the group for the establishment of the Democratic Party, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Thursday that more of those who were protesting were unarmed young people.
In his talk with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, Mr. Blinken “reiterated the United States’ full support for Kazakhstan’s constitutional institutions and media freedom and advocated for a peaceful, rights-respecting resolution to the crisis,” the State Department said in a statement.
Mr. Blinken on Twitter described the call as “productive.”
“We are committed to supporting Kazakhstan’s constitutional institutions and the peaceful and diplomatic resolution of disputes,” he tweeted.
Protests began shortly after the new year in western Kazakhstan after the government allowed a sharp increase in the price of fuel.
But the unrest quickly spread to cities around the vast country, and expanded to include political grievances related to the long rule of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who remains a powerful figure behind the scenes even after stepping down three years ago.
On-the-ground reports from Kazakhstan have been hard to obtain as the government has shut down much of the internet and popular social media and messaging services used by the protesters.