It has long been known that Kazakhstan is one of the post-Soviet countries that does not offer Russians sufficient security against their regime’s persecutions. But the case of the 25-year-old IT developer Alexandr Kachkurkin, which Perwij Otdel’s legal representatives have just made known, points to cooperation between prosecutors in both countries, which is to the detriment of the native Ukrainian. The Russian authorities, who treat Kachkurkin as a citizen in their own right, accuse him of “state treason,” for which he faces 12 to 20 years, possibly even life, in prison.
According to the information provided by rights activists who were persecuted in Russia, Kachkurkin was born in Crimea. As a child, he received Russian citizenship after the 2014 annexation, which was effectively forced on residents of the Ukrainian peninsula at the time. Kachkurkin moved to Kazakhstan for political reasons, Perwij Otdel wrote on Telegram. There he worked, among others, with the American software organization OpenAI.
His downfall was that he was accused in Russia of having transferred money to Ukraine. According to Perwij Otdel, such allegations made up ten percent of all Russian criminal proceedings last year involving the offenses of “state treason,” “espionage,” and “collaboration with a foreign state.”
Approach probably coordinated with Moscow
In addition, the authorities in Almaty, which, as the largest city in Kazakhstan, attracts a particularly large number of foreigners, apparently provided the Russian prosecutors with administrative assistance. Last Wednesday, according to Perwij Otdel, the young man was convicted of two administrative offenses at the same time: he crossed a street in a place not intended for this purpose and smoked a water pipe in a closed room. Both procedures were “fabricated,” the legal advocates emphasized.
In addition, Kachkurkin was ordered to be deported for “disrespecting the laws and sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan” and to prevent further “violations of the law”. All of this didn’t take weeks or months, as usual, but only a few hours. This speaks for a targeted approach coordinated with Moscow.
The deportation to Russia – and not to Ukraine – was carried out immediately, and Kachkurkin was arrested immediately after the plane landed. A Moscow district court on Saturday ordered a man with that surname to be remanded in custody in a case of “state treason”; the details are secret, as always in such cases.
The young Chechen Mansur Mowlayev is currently waiting in a detention center in Almaty to be extradited. He is a critic of the Kadyrov regime ruling in the Russian North Caucasus republic. Movlayev is accused in Russia of financing “extremism”.
Such cases happen again and again in Kazakhstan. But the case of the Ukrainian Kachkurkin does not only show how Russia’s rulers “use Kazakhstan’s authorities and laws to persecute people,” emphasized lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov. But also that “Kazakhstan is no longer a safe constitutional state, even for citizens of Ukraine.”
Putin cast doubt on Kazakhstan’s statehood
The Central Asian country, with which Russia shares a border more than 7,600 kilometers long, is linked to Moscow, among other things, in its Eurasian Economic Union and the ODKB defense alliance. But the leadership in Astana does not openly support President Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial policies. It has not officially recognized the Russian annexations of Ukrainian territories and formally supports the “territorial integrity” of the invaded country. Soon after the annexation of Crimea, Putin cast doubt on Kazakhstan’s statehood with words reminiscent of his tirades against Ukraine.
