President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has appointed a new Prime Minister and government. Eleven ministers out of twenty retain their functions. Nine are new.

What caused a stir was the ascension of former deputy information minister to the post of a fully-fledged minister. Pro-Turk Askar Umarov (pictured) is known for his anti-Russian statements, employing terms like “alcoholics” and “colonizers”.

The Russian press is outraged by this appointment which comes on the heels of the CSTO mission to deliver Kazakhstan from a wave of disorders and acts of terrorism. Yevgeny Primakov Jr. (grandson of the former prime minister and current director of the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation Agency “Rossotrudnichestvo”), immediately announced that he refused to work with a “russophobic scumbag”.