Kazakhstan’s first independent leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has not left his homeland and remains in the capital, where he has been holding consultations with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, his spokesman claimed on Saturday.
The whereabouts of Nazarbayev – an influential veteran politician who ruled Kazakhstan for almost 30 years, from 1991 up to his resignation in 2019 – were unknown for some time, as the nation was engulfed in a series of unprecedented protests that led to outbreaks of violence.
Following his 2019 departure from office, Nazarbayev retained his vast political influence since he took over as the head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Council and also kept his ‘Elbasy’ (‘Leader of the Nation’) title, held since 2010.
The last time he’d made a public appearance was in late December, when he visited an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – an organization comprising most former Soviet Republics. During that trip to St. Petersburg, Nazarbayev met Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.