Quietly but consistently, the Kremlin is exerting pressure on Kazakhstan in a way that, in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, could foreshadow trouble for the world’s largest landlocked country. In particular, Vladimir Putin’s displeasure with certain less than adulatory attitudes from the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan, has been a feature of relations between Russia and the former Soviet republic for years and has lately intensified. 

The latest verbal sparks flew last week at Minsk, where at a meeting of former Soviet Union public prosecutors Russia’s current prosecutor general, Igor Krasnov, said, “I am regularly informed that with the support of Ukrainian non-governmental organizations, active Russophobic activity is also unfolding in Kazakhstan.”