A recent example from Kazakhstan shows how much the war against Ukraine is making Russia's allies nervous.

Moscow's partner in the Eurasian Economic Union and in the defense alliance ODKB is threatening a Russian propagandist with an entry ban.

Parliamentarians openly complain about the "provocateur".

This, Tigran Keossayan, is well connected in Moscow.

He is the husband of RT boss Margarita Simonyan.

Together, the couple is one of the top earners in President Vladimir Putin's media business, as research by anti-corruption hunter Alexei Navalny has shown.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Keossayan appears as a humorist, with his coarse remarks reliably aimed at Putin's opponents.

You can't really count Kazakhstan among them.

It was only in January that Putin sent ODKB “peacekeeping troops” into the country when an uprising had to be put down.

Kazakhstan does not want to recognize the "People's Republics".

Kazakhstan has not condemned Putin's war of aggression, but has abstained from votes in the United Nations, but has also announced that it does not want to help Russia circumvent Western sanctions.

In addition, Kazakhstan does not want to follow Putin's example and recognize the pro-Russian "people's republics" in the Donbass as "states".

Simonyan had already criticized this and said that "ungrateful people can easily become traitors".

Her husband made a similar statement.

In a YouTube clip published last weekend, Keossayan complained that the Russian minority in Kazakhstan was disadvantaged due to the requirements of Kazakh language skills, that people with the "Z" symbol (which stands for the Russian campaign in Ukraine and for support of Putin) arrested in the country and that the May 9 1945 Victory Day military parade there was canceled.

Officially, this was justified by using the money for other, more important tasks.

Instead of the parade, dozens of patriotic commemorations are to be held in the country, and the military show was last held in 2018.

That didn't stop Keossayan: the celebration was a sign of who belonged to whom, he said.

“Kazakhs, brothers, what is this ingratitude?

Guys, did you really decide that Russia is going somewhere to evaporate?

Emigrated to Mars?

Or do you think you are emigrating?” As a citizen of Russia, he says: “Take a close look at Ukraine.

Think seriously.”

"The world has changed"

Russia's leaders would also have to think about cooperation with Kazakhstan.

Keossayan said that anyone who continues to behave in such a “smart ass” way and believe that “nothing will happen” is wrong.

“The world has changed.

Everything has changed.

The train departs.

You can still jump onto the last wagon.”

The "friendly games" are over, "now it's a question of survival.

There is war,” said Keossayan – not with a view to what is happening in Ukraine called “special operations” in Russia, but to a struggle with the West: “The war between two enormous, big ideas, two big countries.

And the second is not Ukraine, but America and NATO.

All the rest, especially the brother countries, must choose a side.

And we have to be careful who is with us and who isn't.” Those who don't join Russia must be counted “among our enemies”.

Many Kazakhs expressed their outrage at Keossayan on social media.

The lawyer Ajman Umarova from Almaty, the country's largest city, wrote on Facebook that in Ukraine, which one should look at, there was "nothing good" to see, "especially for Russia".

"Why are you coming to us in crowds?!" Umarova wrote, referring to numerous Russians who, since the beginning of the war, have fled to Kazakhstan to escape the renewed increase in repression in their homeland.

On Wednesday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Keosayan could be put on a blacklist of people barred from entering the country.

The statement may reflect "the views of part of the Russian public and political establishment," the spokesman said.

But they "poison the atmosphere of good neighborly relations."