Protests that began last weekend over a hike in fuel prices spread across the country, leaving at least 2,000 injured, government officials said. Dozens of deaths also appeared likely.
At least 5,800 people have been detained and more than 2,000 injured during several days of violence last week in Kazakhstan, government officials said on Sunday, after protests ignited by a fuel price hike set off a political crisis and prompted the president to seek help from a Russia-led security alliance to restore order. The protests, which started last weekend in western Kazakhstan and spread thousands of miles east, also left the country’s most populous city, Almaty, in disarray. On Sunday, government officials said that the chaos had been “gradually stabilizing,” and that thousands of people had been swept up in an “anti-terrorist” operation. On Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, along with the leaders of other members of the Collective Treaty Security Organization, an alliance of several former Soviet states, will discuss the situation in Kazakhstan via video conference. To help quell the unrest, the alliance deployed about 2,500 troops to the country, including Russian paratroopers who are guarding “vital facilities and social infrastructure,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
