Armenian troops in Kazakhstan to protect strategic facilities

YEREVAN, January 7. /ARKA/. The Armenian Foreign Ministry has provided details regarding the dispatch of Armenian troops to Kazakhstan as part of the CSTO peacekeeping forces.

In response to Armenpress inquiry, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Vahan Hunanyan said that no Armenian citizen was injured as a result of the events in Kazakhstan.

He also said that the Armenian government does not intend to evacuate its citizens from Kazakhstan at the moment.

"The task of Armenian peacekeepers will be to protect strategic facilities," Hunanyan noted.

Kazakh law enforcers eliminated 26 participants of the recent mass protests and detained over 3,000 more, Khabar-24 TV channel reported on Friday citing the country’s Interior Ministry, TASS reported.

A state of emergency has been declared all across Kazakhstan over mass protests that erupted in the cities of Zhanaozen and Aktau in the Mangistau region in the country’s southwest on January 2 where residents protested against fuel price hikes.

Two days later, riots erupted in Almaty (in the country’s southeast) where police used stun grenades to disperse crowds and also in other cities, in particular, in Atyrau and Aktobe (in the west), Uralsk (in the northwest), Taraz, Shymkent and Kyzylorda (in the south), Karaganda (in the northeast) and even in the capital of Nur-Sultan.

On January 5, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dismissed the government and asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for assistance to stabilize the situation. -0-