Following the signing of the decree on the transfer of the Kazakh language from Cyrillic to Latin, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced the transfer of government and parliament sessions to the Kazakh language, writes journalist Vitaly Portnikov.

When such decisions were made in Kiev, official Moscow flared with anger and began to talk about the dominance of nationalism, and pro-Russian politicians told about the infringement of the rights of Russian-speaking. In the case of Nazarbayev, nothing like this will happen. The Kremlin remains silent, and there are simply no pro-Russian politicians in Kazakhstan. Pro-Russian is, for a minute, Nazarbayev himself. But then why did he make the decision, which in the long term will lead not to the state, but to the civilizational rupture between Russia and Kazakhstan?.

Nursultan Abishevich has always been sensitive to the moment, to the conjuncture - this is his secret of self-preservation. Kazakhstan declared independence the last - not because Nazarbayev did not want this independence, but because he needed to demonstrate to the numerous Russian population of the republic his commitment to the Union. It was Nazarbayev who initiated the creation of the Eurasian Union when his colleagues did not want to hear about any integration, and frankly "trolled" their ideas of neighboring presidents. But Russian-speaking subjects Nazarbayev saw how the future "Elbasy" wants back to the USSR. Despite the fact that the model of Kazakhstan's governance has been increasingly reminiscent of ethnocracy over the past decades, Nazarbayev tried to preserve the external decoration of the Kazakh SSR. And suddenly - such a turn.

Do not suddenly. Nazarbayev knows how to draw conclusions. And what happened is the withdrawal from the Russian attack on Ukraine. The Kazakh ruler could not help but notice that the invader achieved success precisely where there was a lot of Russian and Russian-speaking population where there was practically no Ukrainian language and Ukrainian civilizational influence. And everywhere, where it was - even if not in very large numbers - the attack choked.

Is it then difficult to understand that the security of Kazakhstan is the presence at the state level of the Kazakh language, this is the reformatting of Kazakh people from Soviet people into a Kazakh political nation? And does Nazarbayev risk anything today when he uses his absolute power for such reformatting? After all, an authoritarian ruler with this is much easier than a democratic state.

All this could not have happened if the post-Soviet Kazakhstan felt safe next to post-Soviet Russia. But Putin's Russia has ceased to be post-Soviet - it has turned into an aggressive unpredictable formation, ready for expansion and wars. And Nazarbayev Kazakhstan ceases to be post-Soviet - it becomes Kazakh. And what else, in fact, should he become in response?.

When Putin attacked Ukraine, he lost not only Ukraine. He also lost Kazakhstan. And not only him.