Russian propagandist and director of the TNT TV channel Tina Kandelaki will be banned from entering Kazakhstan, Kazakh Foreign Minister Aybek Smadyarov has said.
Source. This was reported by the Kazakh telegraphic agency KazTAG.
The country's authorities made this decision after Kandelaki's Telegram channel posted a post about the alleged displacement of the Russian language in the country at the state level.
As an example, the TV presenter cited the initiative of the Kazakh Ministry of Transport to rename several railway stations and replace Russian names with Kazakh ones.
"As the experience of the Baltics shows, this is a very dangerous trend. Here, too, everything started small and then turned into a real snowball: Russian schools were closed, Soviet monuments were removed, the Russian language was banned, and finally, pensioners were kicked out into the cold. It is clear that one can go very far under the pretext of maintaining one's place in history, and it is especially convenient to hide behind history to promote such dubious decisions," Kandelaki wrote.
After the post was published, Kandelaki was criticized by Kazakhstani MPs. MP Maksat Tolikbay, in particular, reminded that more than 70% of Kazakhstan's population are ethnic Kazakhs and that the Kazakh language unites most of the country's indigenous population. Member of the Majilis Irina Smirnova emphasized that Kandelaki's post is "a personal opinion of a certain person."
"Does she have any relation to Kazakhstan at all? Has she ever been here? In fact, no one is displacing anything," she commented on the Russian TV presenter's words.
According to Foreign Minister Smadyarov, "the state will never forgive this".
"If necessary, measures are taken. Don't ask us for this [the list of those banned from entering] today or tomorrow, but the state will never forgive this. Perhaps she [Kandelaki] is not going to Kazakhstan, but if she decides to come, she will not be allowed in," the agency quoted him as saying.
Background. As the WSJ reported, Kazakh President Tokayev refused to provide Putin with military assistance during Prigozhin's rebellion.