Nazarbayev employs ‘resign-while-retaining-power’ strategy – a model Putin may use one day

Campaigners drawing attention to the Xinjiang detentions say Nur-Sultan’s public relations campaign is two-faced.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the longtime leader of Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s richest country, has always had a rather particular sense of humor. Back in 1998 he moved the country’s capital from the cozy, sunny city of Almaty to a place called Akmola on the windswept northern steppe.

On March 19, 78 years old Nursultan Äbisjuly Nazarbayev unexpectedly announced his resignation as President of Kazakhstan, referring to the need for “a new generation of leaders”.

In a sign of growing social and political turmoil in Central Asia, Kazakhstan’s 78-year-old president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been head of state of the country since its formation out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, March 19.

And can it be a model for other countries in the region to follow, namely Russia?