NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan – The legal confirmation and delimitation of the border of Kazakhstan with Russia, China, and the states of Central Asia has truly historical significance, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has said.
“Because of sanctions wars and political confrontation, our economy suffers losses,” Tokayev said.” Our country has consistently demonstrated its peacefulness and readiness to make a constructive contribution to global and regional security. Over the years of independence, much has been done strengthen it,” he added.
“We see the terrible, irreparable consequences of the lack of agreements on the borders,” Tokayev stressed.
He also recallsed that Kazakhstan has always had its own understanding of a secure world, its distinctive style in international diplomacy. First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev relied on a multi-vector, balanced foreign policy with emphasis on strategic partnership, cooperation with Russia and regional integration, he said.
“It was the right choice. But the situation in the world does not stand still, the geopolitical aspirations of the leading powers are changing. In these conditions, Kazakhstan is obliged to take care of its national interests. That is why at the EAEU summit on May 19, I stated that integration will be supported by us until such time as it does not harm the sovereignty of Kazakhstan,” Tokayev stressed.
The Kazakh President was responding to recent comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russian television that, during the creation of the Soviet Union, many of the republics that became part of it received a huge amount of Russian lands and traditional Russian historical territories. At the same time, when leaving the USSR, in the opinion of the President of Russia, each of these republics had to go out with what it came from” and not “carry gifts from the Russian people.
Putin did not specify which republics and which lands he had in mind, only noting that when the Soviet Union was created, the contract stipulated the right to withdraw from it, but did not spell out the procedure. The length of the Russian-Kazakh border is more than 7,000 kilometres – this is the largest land border in the world.
Putin once again claimed that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, which the Western countries condemned, was the democratic choice of the population of the peninsula. “Crimea has always been ours, even from a legal point of view,” Putin said.
