Alexander, let's talk about Putin's recent visit to Kazakhstan, and maybe we can talk a little bit about his,

his, I guess you could say, unexpected or surprise, not unexpected. For the media, for the media,

it was a surprise stop at Rostov, on Don. I'm sure that's shoyguyenasimov, obviously it was expected, but, you know,

we didn't know that he was going to stop in Rostov and talk about the military situation in the

conflict in Ukraine. But let's start off with the trip to Kazakhstan, where a lot of business deals

were signed.

Indeed, this is primarily an economic trip.

But it's very important to say that the Kazakh leadership led by Tukai'i

went out of their way to say that Russia and Kazakhstan are allies and that the alliance,

and by the way in this instance, there's no inhibitions about using that word,

the alliance between Kazakhstan and Russia is inviolable.

Now there's been a lot of talk in, you know, a lot of media chatter.

It's been going on for years, by the way, since before the events which brought

Tokayev to power in early 2022.

You remember the protests in Astana and the power struggle with the previous president, Nazarbayev.

Anyway, there's been chattered for years

that Kazakhstan was drifting away from Russia.

On the contrary, the Kazakhs went out of their way to say that this is completely not the case,

and that Kazakhstan and Russia are full-scale allies.

And they talked about this repeatedly in every single meeting

and that the relations were completely friendly,

that there were no difficult issues between them at all. And bear in mind, Kazakhstan

...