NUR-SULTAN (Reuters) – Former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev said in a video address on Tuesday that there was no conflict among Kazakhstan’s elite, in his first appearance since unrest rocked the former Soviet country this month.
Nazarbayev, who ruled the oil-rich country for three decades, said he had remained in Kazakhstan during the worst violence in the country’s post-Soviet history. Unrest erupted over a sharp increase in car fuel prices before swelling into an anti-government movement, with public anger targeted at 81-year-old Nazarbayev.
Several relatives of Nazarbayev have left senior positions in the public sector or at state companies in recent days. Nazarbayev described himself as a “pensioner”, saying full power was in the hands of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
(Reporting by Tamara Vaal in Nursultan and Polina Devitt in Moscow; Writing by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
