‘All this has to be stopped’: Kazakhstan president tells Putin war in Ukraine should end

MOSCOW - Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Russian leader Vladimir Putin on July 25 that the Ukraine war should end, calling for the conflict to be “frozen”, in a rare such face-to-face comment to the Russian leader.

Kazakhstan is an ally of Russia but has never expressed support for Moscow’s Ukraine offensive, which has rattled the Kremlin’s partners in Central Asia.

“How to get out of this situation? Nobody knows, because there are the positions of both sides. But, on the other hand, there is such a moment and possibility to freeze all this,” Tokayev told Putin at a Russian-Kazakh summit in Siberia’s Omsk.

He added: “It is a shame, young people are dying... All this has to be stopped.”

“I chose to express my modest opinion because people knew that I planned to be in Omsk,” he added, sitting next to Putin.

Tokayev told Putin – who launched Moscow’s offensive in 2022 – that the roots of the Russia-Ukraine war “are not completely understandable for many, including for us”.

He said that while the origins of the Armenia-Azerbaijan wars were “clear”, “here, it is very difficult to understand.”

Tokayev suggested going back to 2022 Istanbul agreements and “then move forward to long-awaited peace”.

Putin responded by saying he will inform Tokayev on the war during their meeting.

Diplomatic talks to end more than four years of war have stalled and Putin has repeatedly said Moscow intends to seize the rest of east Ukraine by force. AFP