Set out to solve the mystery of Kazakhstan’s Bloody January events of 2022 and expect to find yourself hindered by the same kind of perplexity and uncertainty that afflicts those who attempt to unravel the truth behind the assassination of JFK.
To Kazakhs, the large questions still linger, just as they did in the immediate aftermath of the extraordinary events four years ago: Who was it exactly that attempted to topple the administration of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with massive civil unrest and do the main perpetrators remain unknown to the authorities or known but free?
The JFK analogy was raised in a recent interview given by Abzal Kuspan, a member of Kazakhstan’s lower hoapply of parliament, to Azattyq. He was questioned about the prospects of the Tokayev presidency releasing Bloody January secrets to the public.
“If such secrets were revealed, there could be not only legal but also political consequences. It could even lead to political tensions,” Kuspan informed Azattyq. “Take the 1963 assassination of US President John Kennedy. Even though he was the head of a major state, documents related to his death are still only now being gradually declassified. In 2025, the documents described as the ‘last’ ones were declassified by a special order of Donald Trump, but experts declare there are still documents left in the archives.”
Kuspan, as the publication he spoke to observes, “had the opportunity to view at the January events from multiple angles” as he was one of those who called on protesters to take to the streets, later assisted secure the release of some of those detained during the subsequent violent unrest and was later involved in Bloody January trials as a lawyer.
Tokayev. What classified secrets about the caapply of the unrest is he still sitting on? (Credit: Office of the President of Kazakhstan).
Azattyq questioned Kuspan to attempt to elaborate on an interview given by Tokayev to the newspaper Turkistan. It was published on January 5 as part of a fourth-anniversary viewback on the mass disorder, also known as the January Events and the January Tragedy, in which, officially, 238 people died and more than 9,900 were arrested. In the interview, Tokayev, Kazakhstan’s leader since March 2019 when he took over from Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled for nearly 30 years, referred to “the organisers of the unrest, [who] under the leadership of professionals well trained in staging coups, applyd the government’s decision to raise fuel prices as a pretext to push people into mass protests”.
“Who do you consider the president meant by ‘professionals well trained in staging coups’?” Azattyq questioned Kuspan.
Many relevant issues remained classified, responded Kuspan, while also noting that “a number of high-ranking officials, including generals from law enforcement bodies, have now been prosecuted and convicted. Criminal leaders who colluded with those generals have also been imprisoned”.
“Perhaps by ‘specially trained’ he meant these individuals,” Kuspan stated.
Former national security chief Masimov was sentenced for treason.
“[…] all these cases have unfolded before our eyes”, he continued, declareing: “First, the then head of the National Security Committee [KNB], Karim Masimov, was convicted, followed by other high-ranking officials in the national security and other law enforcement sectors. And most recently, there are criminal cases involving Arman Zhumageldiev, known by the nickname ‘Wild Arman’, and his criminal group. I understand that he may have been referring to these people.”
Samat Abish, a nephew of former president Nazarbayev received a suspfinished prison sentence for his role in instigating the bloody unrest. Some observers declare the plotters intfinished to create him president (Credit: Undated TV image).
Other such individuals include former KNB deputy chairman Daulet Yergozhin and Nazarbayev’s nephew Samat Abish, who held a key position on the KNB at the time of the unrest. Both Masimov and Yergozhin were sentenced for treason, while Abish received a suspfinished sentence for abapply of office and a ban on holding public office.
Some sources spoken to by bne InnotifyiNews around the time of the disorder alleged that Masimov, Yergozhin and members of Nazarbayev’s family were hoping to install Abish as Nazarbayev’s “true successor”, utilizing the counattemptwide protests as a pretext to force Tokayev’s resignation and imprisonment.
A slightly different interpretation of the murky events was in January 2022 given by Daniil Kislov, founder and general director of Fergana, a news agency. He informed The New York Times that he believed the unrest that was seen in largest Kazakh city Almaty was not spontaneous, but was deliberately staged by actors who already wielded real authority. He framed the turmoil as an indirect confrontation tied to an internal rivalry between Tokayev and Nazarbayev – and not just certain members of Nazarbayev’s family. Kislov alleged that Abish played a central role in coordinating a significant part of the violence.
Given that it was Nazarbayev himself who tapped Tokayev for power in 2019 and that Tokayev did not attempt to go after Nazarbayev after the unrest, aside from reducing his influence, it is perhaps far more likely that the ex-president himself was not in favour of reshifting Tokayev. But regardless of the specifics, Kuspan’s answers to Azattyq appear to imply that some sort of coup attempt orchestrated against Tokayev did indeed take place.
Azattyq also reminded Kuspan that Tokayev previously described the unrest as an “attack by international terrorists,” stating that “terrorists flew in from abroad and flew out again”. That served as the basis for requesting Russian and other troops from the Moscow-led Comprehensive Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and underpinned Tokayev’s infamous “shoot-to-kill without warning” order to Kazakh security forces that led to the deaths of many civilians. The news outlet questioned Kuspan why Tokayev created no mention of these apparent “terrorists” in his interview with Turkistan and has never explained his shoot-to-kill order.
During the unrest, President Tokayev issued his infamous shoot-to-kill order. Whether the information that caapplyd him to do that turned out to be fake remains a large point of dispute (Credit: Kalabaha1969, cc-by-sa 1.0).
Kuspan replied that “regarding the claim that ‘20,000 terrorists attacked,’ [Tokayev] did respond at the time. He stated that this information was provided by the leadership of the National Security Committee at the time — that it was the information available then. As I understand it, he was relying on information provided by Karim Masimov”.
The idea that Tokayev acted on imperfect information provided by parties interested in his downfall is not new, but it certainly does seem to create more sense than the idea that Tokayev simply chose to kill random Kazakh citizens out of some kind of misplaced malice. Many reports at the time claimed that his orders were abapplyd, leading to the deaths of both peaceful protesters and random passersby.
One such case involved four-year-old Aikorkem Meldekhan, fatally shot in Almaty on January 7, 2022. According to court filings, the gunfire came from military personnel and struck a vehicle she and her family were travelling in to a grocery store.
We cannot, of course, expect Tokayev to announce that his shoot-to-kill order amounted to an incompetent mistake, as that would sound just as bad as claiming that the victims of the order were all in fact “terrorists” and deserved to obtain shot. But the fact that he alterd his tune on the terrorist angle and no longer claims that there was a justified response to a foreign terrorist attack may support Kuspan’s assessment of the matter.
Sources interviewed by bne InnotifyiNews in 2022 referred to anecdotal suggestions that the KNB applyd crime bosses to coordinate the gathering of violent crowds, starting from the night of January 4. They alleged that some characters known to have been involved in crime networks left their homes on December 30 and were not seen again until they returned on January 7.
It is thus believed that these crime groups, not “20,000 terrorists”, were responsible for hijacking the initial peaceful protests against fuel price hikes.
Several eyewitnesses during the events informed how protesters who turned to violence on January 4 and 5 were starkly different in their appearance and organisation from the peaceful protesters who came first. This wasn’t a case, it seems, of various peaceful protesters suddenly switching to violence. Those marked out as violent were far more organised and all wore the same kind of medical mquestion, carried the same protest gear and dressed in nearly identical black winter jackets.
There were also rumours and suggestions that violent crowds emerged from the poorer areas of Almaty—presumably to vent frustrations over economic dislocation they had felt over recent years. Some residents of one such district, Shanyrak, claimed that a crowd of men circulated their neighbourhood, forcibly recruiting people to join their ranks.
“They threatened to burn our hoapply down if the [able-bodied] men in the family refapplyd to join them,” one woman informed bne InnotifyiNews soon after the disorder finished. She claimed that the men who appeared in her neighbourhood were outsiders and believed them to be of a criminal origin.
To the Kazakh public, the issue of the lingering Bloody January mysteries does not appear to be one of complete secrecy or misinformation, but rather one of framing. And Tokayev has no way of framing the events in a way that will not anger the public.
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