World News: Russia to Leave, Kazakhstan Says --- The Kremlin deployed more than 2,000 mostly Russian troops to quell protests

"MOSCOW -- Russia-led forces that entered Kazakhstan to support the embattled government following an eruption of protests will start withdrawing within two days, the Kazakh president said Tuesday, as he named a loyalist as prime minister.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the mission had been fulfilled and a stage-by-stage pullout of contingents of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance that includes several former Soviet states, would take no more than 10 days.

The Kremlin deployed more than 2,000 mostly Russian troops last week at Mr. Tokayev's request after sometimes-violent protests triggered by a sharp rise in fuel prices in the oil-rich Central Asian nation spurred deadly unrest over wider social and political discontent, most prominently in the country's largest city, Almaty.

The crisis, which Kazakh officials said was caused by outside forces who hijacked initially peaceful demonstrations, threatened to destabilize the country, an important ally of Russia with strategic significance in Central Asia.

On Monday, President Vladimir Putin defended the deployment of Russian troops as part of the security alliance, underscoring his assertion that his country has a privileged sphere of influence over the former Soviet Union, at a time when tensions between Moscow and the West have reached boiling point over concerns that Russia intends to invade Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that it is up to Kazakhstan whether it needs the alliance troops to remain.

Mr. Peskov said he had no information about foreigners taking part in the unrest, but added that Russian security services were exchanging information with their Kazakh counterparts.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the alliance's troops would continue to carry out tasks in Kazakhstan until the situation is stable "naturally, by decision of the leadership of the Republic of Kazakhstan."

Nearly 10,000 people have been detained in connection with the turmoil, said Kazakh law-enforcement officials. More than 160 people were killed, most of them in Almaty, health authorities said.

Mr. Tokayev told the Kazakh Parliament that a special group would investigate the unrest.

"It is critically important to discover why the state overlooked the presence of militants' sleeper cells and operations of their command center, why so many illegal weapons and specialized equipment ended up in the territory of our country, why no intelligence work was conducted to expose and neutralize agents of terrorism," he said.

A sense of normalcy started to return to the country Tuesday, as residents began to cautiously go about their everyday lives in Almaty, which will remain under an 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew until Jan. 19. Residents said shops were beginning to open during specific daytime hours, construction sites were operating and some public transportation had resumed. The sound of machine gunfire and the smell of tear gas were gone, they said.

City police officers, who largely had disappeared when the troops arrived, were back on the streets, residents said. The city was dotted with armed checkpoints, and at night sirens and loudspeakers reminded residents of the curfew, they said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Tokayev, who accepted the government's resignation on Jan. 5, named Alikhan Smailov as prime minister." [1]

1. World News: Russia to Leave, Kazakhstan Says --- The Kremlin deployed more than 2,000 mostly Russian troops to quell protests
Simmons, Ann M. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 12 Jan 2022: A.18.