“I can’t handle the influx,” said Timur Karpov, who owns an art gallery in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, and has been helping dozens of Russians who left after the war in Ukraine began. Some flee to Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s most populous nation that lies south of Kazakhstan – and desperately look for accommodation. Two-thirds of the 100,000 newcomers have already left, and only about 8,000 received a taxpayer’s code necessary for opening a bank account or getting a temporary residence permit, the website reported, quoting Ministry of Internal Affairs data. “The possibility of using our sky harbours by Russians for their relocation is one of the reasons the immigrants are coming,” migration official Aslan Atalykov reportedly said. Western sanctions curbed the number of airlines working in Russia – and skyrocketed ticket prices. ![]() You can tell them by the accent, by the way they look around,” Boris Nepomnyashchiy, a software developer in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial capital and largest city, told Al Jazeera.Įven though Kazakhstan has the largest share of the ethnic Russian population in Central Asia, most of the newcomers see it as a temporary shelter until they find plane tickets to other nations. Hotels, hostels and private housing in northern Kazakhstan have been so jam-packed that the owner of a movie theatre in the border city of Oral made headlines after letting homeless Russians sleep on the premises free of charge. “We only got a train ticket to Kyzylorda,” the father of a university graduate from Moscow, who may be drafted, told Al Jazeera, referring to the southern Kazakh city. Plane tickets are next to impossible to get. Cars queueing to cross the border into Kazakhstan at the Mariinsky border crossing, about 400 kilometres south of Chelyabinsk, Russia Thousands of cars and buses are stranded in lines at 10 border crossings, and waiting times vary from three hours to three days, according to activists monitoring the border. Mostly arrive via the land border that stretches 7,644 kilometres (4,750 miles). Kazakhstan allows Russians to cross its borders without foreign passports. “They don’t take part in drills, don’t undergo a medical examination and get no training,” the Perviy Otdel (First Department) Russian human rights group said on Tuesday. The number of newcomers to Kazakhstan is growing by the minute as rights groups and independent media report that newly mobilised Russians are herded to the front lines without any prior training. “A search for Russians by conscription offices is no ground for extradition,” Minister of Internal Affairs Marat Akhmetzhanov said on Tuesday. Kazakhstan’s interior ministry said that it would only extradite the Russians who have been put on an international wanted list. On Monday, Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry said it would not recognise the “referendums” in occupied Ukrainian regions that paved the way for their annexation by Moscow.Īnd in June, Tokayev nonchalantly told Putin that his government would not follow Moscow in recognising the “independence” of separatist statelets in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk. Russians attempted to leave to avoid a military call-up at the Kazbegi border crossing in Georgia These days, Central Asian governments allow the new wave of Russians – but fall short of supporting or denouncing the Ukraine war. Some have reported facing xenophobia in Russia and complained about the practices of Russian police and their employers.Ĭentral Asia is also still home to various numbers of ethnic Russians whose forefathers migrated in the Soviet era as communist Moscow tried to develop the region. We have to take care of them and secure their safety,” Tokayev said.Įx-Soviet and mostly Muslim Central Asia has been a major source of labour migrants to Russia for decades. ![]() ![]() “Most of them have to leave because of the hopeless situation. Tokayev instructed his government to help tens of thousands of Russian men that flooded his nation because of the chaotic and massive partial military mobilisation for the war in Ukraine.Īlmost 100,000 Russians have entered Kazakhstan since September 21, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilisation, the Kazakh interior ministry said on Tuesday. “Good ties with neighbours guarantee safety,” Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a former foreign minister known for his negotiating skills, said on Tuesday.īut what he went on to say may seriously strain Kazakhstan’s ties with its giant northern neighbour and former imperial master. Kyiv, Ukraine – The Kazakh president began his speech with a proverb.
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