Translated material
Stopped by as a relative
Nursultan Nazarbayev took his son-in-law to Moscow
Yesterday evening, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev arrived in Moscow on a three-day official visit. Today, Mr. Nazarbayev will be received in the Kremlin by Vladimir Putin, the second meeting of the presidents this year, they met in January during the inauguration of the president of Kazakhstan, elected to this post for the third time in December 2005.The formal reason for the current visit of the Kazakh leader is the opening of the Year of Abai (Abai Kunanbayev is the great Kazakh educator of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) in Russia. Today Nazarbayev and Putin will take part in the opening ceremony of the monument to Abai on Chistye Prudy, next to the Kazakh Embassy. One of the authors of the monument is the creator of sketches of the Kazakh national currency, the tenge, artist Murat Ainekov. The reciprocal event will be the holding of the Year of Pushkin in Kazakhstan and the opening of monuments to him in Astana and Almaty.
According to Vremya Novostei, no obvious sensations are expected as a result of Mr. Nazarbayev's visit. Four protocols have been prepared for signing on the terms of lease of Russian military training grounds (Sary-Shagan, Emba and Priozersk) on the territory of Kazakhstan, an agreement on the launch of the Kazakh satellite “Kazsat” from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, an agreement on cooperation between Vnesheconombank and the “Eurasian Group”, headed by a trio of famous Kazakh billionaires (according to Forbes magazine), Mashkevich, Shodiev and Ibragimov.
Tomorrow the President of Kazakhstan will be elected honorary professor at the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, and then will speak in the State Duma. And then, having canceled a previously planned speech at MGIMO and a meeting with the head of LUKOIL Vagit Alekperov, Mr. Nazarbayev will fly home. In the extensive list of ministers and high-ranking officials accompanying him in Moscow, the name of the president’s middle son-in-law, vice-president of the recently created Samruk superholding Timur Kulibayev, attracts attention. Mr. Nazarbayev rarely includes members of his family in his official delegation, and observers in Kazakhstan see Kulibayev's appearance alongside the president as an apparent strengthening of his faction's position in the fight for his father-in-law's political legacy.