The Kazakhstan Protests & Russia's Standoff With the West | Joanna Lillis

Hidden Forces

Demetri Kofinas

Business, Government

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Episode 228 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Kazakhstan-based journalist Joanna Lillis, author of "Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan," about the recent protests and unrest that unfolded in Kazakhstan over the past two weeks and how this ties into the larger geopolitical chess match currently underway in Eastern Europe.

This is the multi-polar world in action. It's no longer some theoretical thing that we've read about or that we're moving towards—we are in it. This is the world we live in, and in this world, everything is up for grabs. Every crisis, every border skirmish, every negotiation is an opportunity for any and all of the major powers to change the status quo and to change the rules of the game to their advantage. And this starts with taking control of the story and telling a narrative about events before the facts emerge and before people have had a chance to even begin to form an educated opinion about whatever it is that's happening.

Today's episode is meant to provide you with a sense of where and how the events in Kazakhstan fit into this new global disorder of nation states, non-state actors, mercenaries, agitators, hackers—pretty much everyone interested in exercising influence on an international stage that is fluid and where power is constantly up for grabs. The world is becoming ever more complex and if you want to exercise a level of agency over your own sense of reality and be anything other than a spectator in someone else's story you need to step back from all the noise and all the hustles and exercise a level of informed skepticism without simply resorting to questioning everything and therefore believing in nothing. This is what Hidden Forces is all about.

You can access the full episode, transcript, and rundown to this week's conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 01/11/2022

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up everybody? My name is Demetra Cofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces,
0:06.3	a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens to challenge consensus
0:13.4	narratives and to learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world.
0:19.4	My guest in this week's episode is Kazakhstan-based journalist Joanna Lilis.
0:24.4	Joanna is also the author of Dark Shadows inside the secret world of Kazakhstan,
0:30.4	which paints a compelling and very human, I would say, portrait of the former Soviet
0:35.7	Republic that is little known in the West, but which is strategically central to both Russia
0:41.5	and China. For anyone who hasn't been following the recent events in Kazakhstan,
0:46.2	there were a series of protests that erupted in the country two weeks before this episode
0:51.2	is scheduled to air. Sparked by what appears to have been a rise in gas prices that affected an
0:57.2	overwhelming majority of the population, but especially those living in cities like Zenozhen
1:03.3	where the protests first began. They quickly spread across the country, turning violent,
1:08.4	and within just a few days we learned that there had been some kind of coup attempt
1:12.7	perhaps initiated by the former president Nusel Tana Zarbayev, which is why it seems that the
1:18.8	current president of Kazakhstan, Kasim Takoyev, reached out for help to Vladimir Putin,
1:24.7	who in turn sent forces into Kazakhstan to secure the government and to overcome what Takoyev and
1:31.1	Putin have both suggested is not entirely a domestic operation, hinting in other words
1:37.4	that maybe Kazakhstan is next on the list of countries being targeted for Western inspired
1:43.5	so-called color revolutions. There is a lot to unpack here, but by all credible accounts,
1:50.6	this does seem to have been a domestic attempted power grab by Nusel Tana Zarbayev,
1:56.0	that if anything Putin sees the pond in order to promote the Russian state narrative
2:01.2	about Western expansion, either for the purposes of strengthening his negotiating position
	...

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