Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski has congratulated his Kazakh counterpart, Kasim Khomart Tokayev, on winning re-election and has advocated strengthening diplomatic relations with a country that despite being under Russia’s sphere of influence, has been neutral in the war in Ukraine.
«He expressed interest in further development of bilateral relations between Ukraine and Kazakhstan. I appreciate Kazakhstan’s humanitarian aid,» Zelensky moved on his official profile on the social network Twitter.
The point of interest in this publication lies precisely in Tokayev’s distancing from Russia’s line of argumentation from the early stages of the war. Despite being a regional ally of Moscow, Astana declared itself in early March as neutral in the war in Eastern Europe.
Already at that time, Tokayev contacted both Zelenski and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to stress the need to reach an agreement between the parties that would put an end to a conflict then in the making, and which almost nine months later shows no signs of coming to an end.
This move by Astana came as something of a surprise, especially since shortly before, at the beginning of January, it had had to resort to the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to deal with a series of protests against the price of liquefied gas, an incident which resulted in more than 220 deaths.
