‘I was naive about Russia’: Central Asians on the Ukraine war
Serik Talipzhanov does not like Russia any more.
The 32-year-old bank cashier lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital and the financial hub of ex-Soviet Central Asia.
The city is still largely Russian-speaking, and Talipzhanov, who can name several generations of his ethnic Kazakh forefathers, considers Russian his mother tongue.
But his opinion about Kazakhstan’s former imperial master and beacon of soft power underwent an ideological U-turn in the past year, mostly due to the widely documented atrocities Russian servicemen committed in Ukraine.
“I was very naive about Russia,” he told Al Jazeera by phone. “I always thought that even if politically things were getting worse up there, their culture made up for it.”
But he and like-minded Kazakhs are still in the minority.
Largely positive
Opinion polls about what Central Asians think about Russia are rare.
The latest one was conducted in September by the Central Asian Barometer, a regional research group, only in Kazakhstan and neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.
Only 28 percent of Kazakhs blamed Russia for starting the war, while 19 percent thought Ukraine was responsible, and one in 10 respondents said both nations shared the responsibility, the poll said.
An overwhelming 87 percent of Kazakhs still had a “very” or “somewhat” favourable attitude towards Russia, and only 8 percent were negative about it.
