The interior ministry said 2,298 people had been arrested during the unrest, while the police spokesperson Saltanat Azirbek told the state news channel Khabar-24 that “dozens of attackers were liquidated”. It was not immediately possible to verify the figures, but video footage showed violent clashes between protesters and authorities in a number of cities. A local journalist, Ardak Bukeeva, who spent Thursday speaking with protesters in central Almaty, said demonstrators who stormed the presidential residence in the city told her dozens of people had been killed during the assault. The decision to intervene came just hours after Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson said there should be no foreign interference in Kazakhstan. The Russian MP Leonid Kalashnikov told Interfax the troops would stay “for as long as the president of Kazakhstan believes it necessary”.

Source: The Guardian January 06, 2022 21:58 UTC