Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev has spent months “on the ropes,” as they say in boxing.

Atambaev had supported Sooronbai Jeenbekov to become president in Kyrgyzstan’s October 2017 presidential election. He repeatedly said Jeenbekov would continue his policies, and there were suspicions that Atambaev saw himself remaining as the real power behind the scenes.

Things did not turn out that way.

Atambaev was quickly distanced from any role in government, and he started criticizing Jeenbekov’s performance and publicly expressing regret he had supported Jeenbekov.

Many officials from Atambaev’s administration have been detained and put on trial on corruption charges since he left office in November 2017. And investigations into alleged corruption by Atambaev-era officials seemed to be marching steadily toward Atambaev himself.

At the end of June, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to strip Atambaev of his immunity from prosecution (as a former president), opening the way for prosecutors to investigate possible violations Atambaev may have committed as head of state.

The Interior Ministry has summoned him for questioning three times this month, and Atambaev has ignored the summonses. He had also effectively barricaded himself in his family compound outside Bishkek, brought in some of his supporters, and said there were guns on the premises and that they would be used if anyone came to detain him.

But his days looked numbered.

That changed on July 24, when Atambaev made good on suggestions that he was going to fly to Moscow. There, he met with President Vladimir Putin, and the Russian leader's thinly veiled comments indicated Moscow would be dissatisfied if legal proceedings against Atambaev continued.

And every politician in Kyrgyzstan will remember what Russia has already shown it can do to influence Kyrgyzstan’s political process.

Speaking after his meeting with Atambaev, Putin offered words of support for Jeenbekov and his government and called for the Kyrgyz to “unite around the current president and help him in developing the state.”

But Putin also said, “Kyrgyzstan has endured several serious internal political shocks...at least two.” Putin added that the “country needs political stability.”

The two "internal political shocks" that Putin was referring to are almost certainly Kyrgyzstan’s revolutions in 2005 and 2010, each of which resulted in the ousting of a president.

Russia played a role in Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 revolution.

Kyrgyzstan’s president after the 2005 revolution was Kurmanbek Bakiev, who eventually came to be seen as an untrustworthy ally by Moscow. Russia promised huge loans to Kyrgyzstan to develop its hydropower potential, which also would ease Kyrgyzstan's dependence on its Central Asian neighbors for energy supplies. The deal possibly included an understanding that Kyrgyzstan would evict U.S. forces from Bishkek’s Manas International Airport, where they had set up a small base to support operations in Afghanistan since December 2001.

Bakiev struck a new deal with the United States, and Bakiev’s son Maksim and some of Maksim’s friends were accused by Moscow of skimming money from the first Russian loan of some $450 million to invest in other ventures, seemingly hoping for a quick profit before returning the money.

Russian TV is widely available in Kyrgyzstan, and it started carrying highly critical reports about President Bakiev and his son. There were already protests in Kyrgyzstan against utility-fee hikes. Russian media added fuel to the fire with coverage of Bakiev and his family, and by April 2010, Bakiev was chased from office.

That's not the end of the story.

One of the most popular politicians to emerge from the 2010 revolution was Omurbek Tekebaev, the leader of the Ata-Meken (Fatherland) party. Ata-Meken seemed a sure bet to take the most seats in the early parliamentary elections called for October 2010, and Tekebaev himself appeared set to become Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister after those elections. Instead, Ata-Meken got the fewest votes among the five parties that won seats in the elections and Atambaev became prime minister.

Tekebaev was clearly pro-Western in his views, and Russian TV had started airing critical reports about Tekebaev several months before the elections.

The episode appeared to establish that Russia can use soft power to shape events inside Kyrgyzstan.

Now, Putin’s comments on July 24 seem to indicate the Kremlin wants the Atambaev-Jeenbekov feud to end right away. Russia has a military base at Kant in Kyrgyzstan, and the Kremlin has generally pushed back against signs of revolution in the space of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) while also signaling that it does not want to see political tensions rise again in Kyrgyzstan.

And Moscow may have already flexed its muscles by enabling Atambaev to leave his barricaded compound in Kyrgyzstan to travel to Russia from Kant aboard a specially arranged private plane to Moscow.

Atambaev has vowed to return, and now there seems no reason he should not. Putin just implicitly guaranteed Atambaev’s security, although Putin’s references to stability might also send the message to Atambaev that he should cease his criticism of Jeenbekov.

Putin’s warning could quiet the situation for a while.

But such an outcome won't satisfy many people in Kyrgyzstan, and it's unlikely that anything has been forgiven or forgotten in Bishkek.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

The scrubby foothills around the Kyrgyz village of Ak-Sai and the Tajik exclave of Vorukh have been a hot spot for a decade, with scores of people injured -- and a few killed -- in regular clashes along the still-unmarked border there.

The presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were already planning to meet nearby on July 26 to discuss border issues.

But when violence around Vorukh left one person dead and at least 27 more wounded on July 22, it underscored the importance of resolving this longstanding border dispute.

By July 23, despite fresh reports that a Kyrgyz border guard had received a gunshot wound, officials in both countries were saying the situation had stabilized. But the road to the area remained closed, and Kyrgyz authorities decided to evacuate 315 people from the region. Fifteen people were reportedly in hospitals in Kyrgyzstan; four were said to be hospitalized in Tajikistan (eight others had been discharged with minor injuries); and family members were preparing to bury 52-year-old Tajik national Jaloliddin Karoev, who had died of a gunshot wound to the eye.

Each side offers a slightly different account of what happened on the evening of July 22, typical of all the several-times-a-year clashes in recent years along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border.

In this case, both sides seem to agree that it was the raising of a Tajik flag by individuals from the Vorukh exclave that sparked this latest violence.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon is reportedly due to visit Vorukh this week for the first time in 26 years, so residents were said to be preparing for their VIP guest.

Where exactly the flagpole was set up is one of the most fiercely disputed questions. Some Ak-Sai residents said it was put on disputed territory; some Vorukh residents insist it was firmly within the exclave.

There are also reports that Ak-Sai residents put up a sign in the nearby Dacha area that read "Ak-Sai" in response to the raising of the Tajik flag and that Vorukh residents quickly destroyed it.

In any case, the fighting started shortly after the Tajik flag was raised, with people on each side throwing stones. Soon, someone brought hunting rifles, not unusual in the area since hunting is common in the nearby mountains. The four hospitalized Tajiks, one of them a police officer, were reportedly being treated for gunshot wounds; 12 of the 15 hospitalized Kyrgyz were being treated for gunshot wounds.

The incident does not appear to have changed President Rahmon’s plans to visit Vorukh, or to meet with Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov in the nearby Tajik town of Isfara, on July 26.

In fact, the violence could give further impetus to Rahmon and Jeenbekov to work harder to resolve their countries’ border disputes.

Previously, clashes have led to officials in both countries vowing to find solutions to the problems of residents near the border. But despite agreements on things like joint patrols of the border and locally arranged joint celebrations of holidays like Norouz, the situation in the Vorukh-Ak-Sai area seems to be worsening. Previous scuffles involved sticks and stones; the use of firearms marks an escalation, and cooling heads now will be even more difficult.

Most of the 315 Kyrgyz citizens evacuated from the area this week are women and children. Fifty-five of them are temporarily living with family members in other areas of southern Kyrgyzstan, while the other 260 people are temporarily living in tents in the provincial capital, Batken. The version of events they tell others in southern Kyrgyzstan will almost surely influence how those people view tensions along the Tajik border.

Similarly, Tajik citizens being treated in the hospital are likely to emerge with a version of events that holds Kyrgyz responsible for the violence on July 22.

It is significant that, for once, the two presidents are meeting near the site of a conflict to discuss the problems.

Previous talks between leaders of the two countries were conducted by telephone or on the sidelines of summits of multilateral organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the Commonwealth of Independent States.

So Rahmon and Jeenbekov's face-to-face meeting this week could provide an opportunity for progress.

But the challenge is ensuring that they leave behind real change once they're gone.

With contributions by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz and Tajik services.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL