Ooit was er de afspraak dat Rusland voor de veiligheid van Kazakhstan zou zorgen en China zou helpen met de economie te ontwikkelen.
Sinds april werken ze militair meer met China samen en sinds mei gaan ze samen met Turkije ook TB2s in Kazakhstan bouwen.
En het militaire budget is verdubbeld.
https://www.wsj.com/artic(...)ral-asia-11658439761For years, Moscow and Beijing had a tacit division of labor, with Russia providing the security oversight and China developing the area’s economies. That’s now changing.
In late April, China’s Minister of National Defense, Wei Fenghe, visited Kazakhstan and met with Mr. Tokayev. According to China’s Ministry of National Defense, the two agreed to strengthen military cooperation. Kazakhstan is also pushing for closer relations with regional power and North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Turkey. In early May, Mr. Tokayev flew to Ankara, where Turkish and Kazakh officials signed a deal to jointly produce military drones in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan also has increased its own defense budget by 441 billion tenge, or about $918 million.
Part of the money would go to increasing Kazakhstan’s military reserves, a senior official said. Kazakhstan has also learned lessons from Ukraine’s fierce resistance, the official added, namely that it must reform its army to be more mobile and adept at combating hybrid warfare, which employs a mix of conventional warfare and methods like cyberwar, disinformation and election meddling.
While some in the West say Russia’s military has been exposed as a paper tiger, one senior official from a Central Asian country said that fear is only growing over Russia’s ambitions. “It’s one thing when they deal with so many others and they have Eastern Europeans and Ukraine to spend their time abusing,” the official said. “Imagine if they don’t have Ukraine to abuse. Are we going to be next?”
[ Bericht 1% gewijzigd door slashdotter3 op 27-07-2022 20:02:51 ]