I subscribe to "Today's Worldview", a usually-useful geopolitical insight from the Washington Post into something not in the news but worthy of note. Last night's newsletter was titled something inane like "What does Putin want in Ukraine" even as the WaPo issued a news alert about Tokayev issuing a shoot-to-kill against protesters.
I gotta admit - I didn't see it until the capital burned but I mean, once you see it it's obvious. Everyone's been losing their shit about troop positions
but I mean
And it's not like Putin has ever seized power in a manufactured domestic crisis before.
Kazakhstan has proven coal reserves 320 times greater than their annual consumption, tenth largest reserves in the world. China's shit in Kazakhstan is doing fine, Chevron's is not.. Kazakhstan is also uhhh where the Russian space program lives.
So the old Soviet dude got kicked out by the new Soviet dude who is being an asshole and murdering protestors while "a coalition of the willing" flies into Almaty which uhhh isn't too far off from how the Soviets ended up in Afghanistan. they were there to "shore up" the government. Dollars to donuts the new Soviet dude is going to be allowed to overreach just enough that a hand-picked successor can take over, stabilize things and allow Putin to dictate terms to Xi against the West.
Ukraine. Yeah Putin was gonna roll on a prospective NATO member. That was definitely going to happen.