Groups of violent rioters appeared to have been directed by handlers, RT crew is told
As Kazakhstan recovers from a wave of street violence, RT spoke with residents of the country’s largest city, Almaty, who claim to have noticed peculiar details about the rioters, and their levels of coordination and organisation.
After a few days of relative calm, the central part of the megapolis still resembles a warzone, with burnt-out husks of government buildings, boarded-up looted shops, and damaged vehicles lining the streets.
The city is heavily patrolled by police and military, with a certain degree of mistrust observed between them, RT’s correspondent on the ground, Igor Zhdanov, has reported. Plenty of weapons and uniforms have been looted during the unrest, prompting concern from law enforcement that they could be attacked by criminals impersonating officers.
The violence appeared to have been well-organized, Irina Vitovtoava, a woman living in central Almaty who said she had a chance to watch all the carnage right from her apartment, alleged. While protesters seemed to be peaceful at first, they were promptly joined by armed people kitted out with what she insisted was stolen riot gear.
“Some people from the crowd rummaged in bushes and picked something up from the ground. It wasn’t rocks, it wasn’t iron bars – they were looking for something small, they had something small in their hands. I think it might have been some kind of drug because it was something very small,” Vitovtoava said. She offered no evidence to support the assertion, nor did she elaborate on what sort of substance may have been used.
Many of the rioters donned matching outfits, favoring black clothes, as well as using gloves and masks to apparently make it harder to identify them, she added.
“They were wearing black clothes, some were wearing masks, hats, and we noticed white gloves,” another witness claimed.
The violence appeared to have been well-coordinated, with men described as “handlers,” equipped with headsets and walkie-talkies, waiting behind the crowds and directing them, Vitovtoava alleged. Some of these were dressed in red – in stark contrast with the vast majority of the crowd in dark clothes, she noted.
“The bulk of the people were in black, grey, but, notably, people in bright red jackets stood out. I immediately wondered, who would want to stand out like that at an event like this,” the eyewitness said.
The unrest began in Kazakhstan over a week ago, with mass protests triggered by a sharp hike in fuel prices at the start of the new year. The rallies promptly grew increasingly political and violent, with multiple locations, Almaty in particular, turning into battle zones, as stores were looted and government buildings torched.
The violence prompted the Kazakh authorities to seek help from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which promptly deployed peacekeeping forces in the country. The mission was declared a success on Tuesday, with the allied deployment expected to begin a gradual withdrawal in two days.
There have been claims from Kazakh officials that up to 20,000 “terrorists” took park in the violence. However, no evidence has been furnished to support this figure.
https://ift.tt/3reVO2d 12, 2022 at 03:05PM
from RT – Daily news
