Kazakhstan is treading delicately because it strives to have two feuding neighbors joyful amid a row over Russia’s unintended shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian airliner, which crashed out of doorways the Kazakh metropolis of Aktau. Kazakh officers maintain exiguous to reach and loads to lose as they oversee the break investigation.
Relatives between Azerbaijan and Russia reside fraught as Azerbaijani officers watch for the outcomes of the legitimate break investigation. Kazakhstan’s vice minister of transportation, Talgat Lastayev, launched December 30 that preliminary findings are anticipated to be launched in unhurried January.
Azerbaijani-Russian force revolves around the Kremlin’s reluctance to admit Russian air defenses brought the aircraft down on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 folks on board. Kazakhstan got caught in the center for the reason that jet, which had been certain for Grozny in the Russian situation of Chechnya, crossed the Caspian Sea to develop a break touchdown in Aktau. That truth thrust Kazakhstan into a key role in an investigation in which the important actors – Azerbaijan and Russia – maintain starkly differing agendas.
Within the face of Russian silence over culpability for the break, Azerbaijani chief Ilham Aliyev has pressed for a clear probe. At the identical time, he has accused Kremlin of making an are attempting to conceal up its responsibility for the tragedy, citing that Russian officers before the entire lot equipped several “absurd” alternate theories before evidence of the shoot-down came to light. Govt-pleasant files retail outlets in Baku even accused Russia of prompting the jet to strive a touchdown in Aktau in the hope that it would break into the Caspian, thus erasing all evidence of Russian involvement. Russia’s skill to this level suggests the Kremlin is a long way from fervent to gape the total facts come out.
Within the ruin, among the 29 survivors maintain equipped testimony substantiating a shoot-down, and the intact rear share of the aircraft presentations signs of being hit by anti-aircraft flak. The dim boxes were recovered and despatched to Brazil for evaluation.
Despite their country’s central issue in the investigation, Kazakh officers maintain tried to reside aloof from the festering controversy. Within the principle hours after the break, Kazakh officers perceived to enhance different theories pushed by Russia to expose the tragedy, including the since discredited claim that an oxygen tank contained in the aircraft exploded. Kazakh officers additionally before the entire lot backed a Russian proposal that a CIS commission tackle the investigation, which would maintain given Moscow expanded influence over the probe’s scope and final file.
As evidence of a shoot-down, including survivor accounts, persisted to mount, Kazakhstan has adopted a decidedly neutral tone. All thru the final days of December, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has had phone conversations with both his Azerbaijani and Russian counterparts, Aliyev and Vladimir Putin, consistent with the presidential press provider, which became once significantly quiet on the substance of these discussions.
Enlighten-controlled media in Kazakhstan has largely refrained from reporting on what triggered the break. The leitmotif of legitimate publications is that Kazakhstan is making every effort to obtain out what no doubt befell. In contemporary days, Kazakh officers were scrupulous in pronouncing their actions are guided by worldwide ideas. Shall we direct, Transport Minister Marat Karabayev cited the Global Civil Aviation Group’s Chicago Convention in explaining why the crashed jet’s dim boxes were despatched to Brazil, action that looked determined to rankle Russia, given the Kremlin’s obvious need to suppress evidence of a shoot-down.
“Kazakhstan stands for objectivity in investigation of air catastrophe,” stated a December 30 commentary published by the authorities newspaper Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, quoting a Kazakh political scientist, Eduard Poletaev. “The resolution to ship on-board recorders for decoding to Brazil is a manifestation of the independence, sovereignty and impartiality of Kazakhstan.”
Just media retail outlets in Kazakhstan maintain covered the controversy over the break’s predicament off. Accounts equipped by Orda.kz, as an illustration, maintain tended to focus on the assertions made by Aliyev and Western officers supporting the belief of Russian responsibility for the tragedy.
The reasons why Kazakh leaders are fervent to steer clear of angering either Azerbaijan or Russia over their handling of the investigation are determined: both worldwide locations are key financial partners for Kazakhstan, and any hiccup in kin can maintain huge monetary repercussions for Astana.
One source of leverage for Russia is the pipeline that connects oil produced in Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil discipline to export markets by the utilization of a pipeline and oil terminal on the Russian port of Novorossiysk under the auspices of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The pipeline handles about 80 percent of Tengiz oil exports.
Russia, as a strategy of either influencing Kazakh resolution-making or expressing its displeasure with Astana’s actions, might per chance perhaps disrupt pipeline operations. “Moscow can stop the transportation of Kazakh oil to Europe under some pretext such because the repair of the CPC infrastructure, as they did at some stage in the summer season of 2022,” Talgat Ismagambetov, a political scientist on the Almaty Institute of Philosophy, Politics and Faith, acknowledged in an interview. In such an instance, “Kazakhstan might per chance perhaps suffer mountainous losses yet again, and this might occasionally be a warning [or] punishment from Russia.”
At this level, Kazakhstan might per chance perhaps maintain considerable extra to lose by alienating Azerbaijan. The two worldwide locations are key transit nodes for East-West replace by the utilization of the Center Corridor route. As properly as, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are partners in a establishing consortium to ship solar- and wind-generated energy to Western markets.
“For Astana, Baku is a indispensable accomplice, and in due path, an considerable extra indispensable accomplice, especially by draw of the joint construction of the Trans-Caspian route,” Ismagambetov acknowledged.
While Russia maintains its silence in regards to the investigation, Aliyev has voiced approval of Kazakhstan’s actions to this level, describing the Kazakh emergency response to the break and outpouring of public sympathy for the victims as “what correct friendship and brotherhood witness relish.”
Tokayev’s diplomatic background has proven priceless in helping Kazakhstan negotiate an advanced predicament to this level, consistent with Ismagambetov. “Tokaev has acted subtly on fable of he is a reliable diplomat and right here is his intuition,” he acknowledged.
