You mean "according to the interior ministry". Of course the government will make it sound like it is the real victim here (while also celebrating its Kill to Death Ratio). The government also claims there are "20,000 bandits" who it "[has] to destroy ... soon". Comparison to Tienanmen could be an understatement, if the government achieves its goals.
Are you willing to say that all the violent and armed (and properly filmed and documented) clashes + captures of airports and govt buildings were only done by the police/army themselves? This is really wild.
No, I'm saying that if there are really 20,000 armed fighters trying to take over the country, then the government should admit that it's fighting a civil war.
This is what you're shown or what you want to see.
I've seen a lot of videos of armed rebels.
BTW, the video you are referring to is NOT Russian uniforms, it is Kazakhstan army. This is again a sample of propaganda you receive. The uniforms are completely different.
The local sources in social media all were mentioning protester fatality numbers in hundreds. They are definitely not reliable, however, I would consider the official numbers reported by KZ government - which BBC is quoting - as even less trustworthy than random social media posts.
Until we have better data I think that it is entirely appropriate to treat all current data from KZ government as intentionally falsified and either apply a reasonable multiplier (historically from other similar cases, a 10x multiplier seems appropriate; certainly that would be a better estimate than accepting their reports at face value, in similar earlier situations the reports always have been intentionally adjusted) or treat the local estimates as the best estimates currently available.
Considering the article is trying to make the KZ government look bad, I'd say the part that appears less biased is relevant.
The whole point of HN is to comment on the article. BBC is obviously UK government propaganda, so the fact their headline is clickbait and the little data they do include doesn't support it is relevant.
Why should the UK-propaganda even have a stance on Kazakhstan? This sound like the usual russian troll approach of "Everyone does everything, so bad is relative" fog grenade.
Russia seems to be pretty run-down lately in the east. Especially with Chinese investments basically buying out the usual province robber barons and slowly replacing the owner-caste.
Do you have any basis for the claim that "Kazakhstan's current government is a Russian ally."? President Tokayev seems to mostly continue the course of carefully balancing Kazakhstans national independence with all their foreign relations, so one could as well claim that Kazakhstan current government a chinese ally or a european ally, given that they are not at war with either and those are the three largest trade partners of Kazakhstans. In order of export trade volume: EU, China, Russia and for import trade volume Russia, China, EU. Note that Kazhakstan exports five times more than it imports. (Source: oec.world and comtrade.un.org)
I see how my comment was badly worded and misunderstandable, my point is to refute the strong undertone that a nation can only ever be allied with one side of a cold war bloc as outdated, overly simplistic and completely missing the actual reality of politics and economics in the region.
The data is included because there not much verifiable source to come by. Think about your logic -- BBC is UK propaganda who wants to make Kazakhstan look bad, yet they cited government's number and quoted the president, not anyone from the protesters? The government is a party of the conflict, yet you consider their reported number believable?
