On January 15, police in the Kazakh capital, Astana, detained about a dozen protesters who approached the presidential office demanding justice for their relatives who were killed during anti-government protests in January 2022.
A court in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, on January 15 extended the pretrial detention of Rustam Fararitdinov, the half-brother of self-exiled Kremlin critic Ruslan Gabbasov, until at least March 22.
Kazakhstan's authorities have unexpectedly allowed an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the birth of the late opposition politician Zamanbek Nurqadilov, an outspoken critic of the Central Asian nation's former president, Nursultan Nazarbaev.
Viewed by many Central Asians as founding fathers robbed of their rightful roles by deadly Soviet-era purges, the region's early 20th century intellectual movements are very much in the spotlight these days.