# Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ## Identity and office Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has been president of Kazakhstan since 20 March 2019. He remains commander-in-chief. He does not write ODIHR’s mandate. He does order lethal force and invite a CSTO contingent. He is not a liberaliser who completed the transit. Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned on 19 March 2019; Tokayev, then Senate chair, became acting president the next day. Nazarbayev is named as an unresolved person candidate. This run does not mint a page for him. On 9 June 2019 a snap election returned 70.96 percent official. ODIHR’s 2019 final report found that the election took place in a political environment dominated by the incumbent and lacked genuine competition. When the January 2022 fuel-price revolt escaped the script, he used the full vertical. On 5 January he dismissed Nazarbayev as Security Council chairman, took the chair, and requested CSTO assistance. The organisation applied Article 4. It was the first CSTO deployment to a member state. Vladimir Putin is the force-provider counterpart. This page does not mint CSTO as a Person. On 7 January, in a televised address, he said: “I have given the order to law enforcement and the army to shoot to kill without warning” ([AP, 7 January 2022](https://apnews.com/article/kazakhstan-law-enforcement-agencies-6dc8df9639367c3845aa00a008072997); [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/kazakh-president-says-he-has-given-orders-shoot-kill-terrorists-2022-01-07/)). Same-day Interior Ministry figures (26 “liquidated,” 18 police dead) were early operational numbers. They are not mixed here with the later 238 list. On 16 August 2022 the Prosecutor General published names of 238 dead, 19 of them law-enforcement. That is an official list, contested as to circumstances (lethal force, deaths in custody). This page does not invent a higher or lower total and does not dress 238 as UCDP. After January he removed Nazarbayev from the Security Council, rewrote the constitution on 5 June 2022, and on 20 November 2022 took 81.31 percent to a single seven-year term. ODIHR’s 14 July 2023 final report did not read that ballot as a genuine contest of power. A sourced statement of non-recognition of Russia’s 2022 annexations is a recorded diplomatic act. It does not put him on the Ukraine-war driver as a co-belligerent and does not offset January 2022. ## Documented benefits The offsets that a commissioned-positive portrait would lead with are real only where dated, and they are thin on this chain. Multi-vector photographs with Xi and a non-recognition statement are methods, not human-rights credits. This page does not invent a liberalisation halo to balance shoot-to-kill. ## Contributions and limits of responsibility He ordered, invited, and certified the instruments on this page. Interior troops and CSTO contingents executed. ODIHR and the Prosecutor General tabulated neighbouring products. Sharing execution is not a reason to drop the row. It is a reason not to treat every contested death in custody as a personal homicide coefficient from 7 January 2022. ## Causal chain through facts 2019 succession and its January 2022 failure-mode weaken [capacity for peaceful transfer of power](/drivers/capacity-for-peaceful-transfer-of-power) — one driver, not two. 2019 and 2022 ballots weaken electoral integrity. January 2022 hang on [civic space](/drivers/civic-space), not on Kronstadt-era [freedom-of-assembly](/drivers/freedom-of-assembly) and not on Soviet [state-repression](/drivers/state-repression). He is not attached to ukraine-war. He connects to those mechanisms only through dated facts, not as a tag on a personality. ## What the score does not say This page does not promise an exact number. Direction on this chain is negative: the documented instruments close a managed succession with lethal emergency powers and a CSTO invitation. A later genuine contest, a court that vacated the shoot-to-kill order, or a measured series that can be argued as a consequence of these instruments would be a different fact with a different date. Nursultan Nazarbayev, Karim Massimov, and Askar Mamin remain names on this file, not invented biographies. ## Dated facts - 2022: Snap election returns Tokayev with 81.31 percent to a single seven-year term. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-election-2022. Sources: https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/kazakhstan/548389, https://www.election.gov.kz/. - 2022: Prosecutor General publishes names of 238 dead after January unrest. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-238-list-2022. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/kazakhstan-says-238-people-killed-during-january-unrest-2022-08-16/, https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/prokuror. - 2022: Constitutional referendum curtails Leader-of-the-Nation privileges and opens a single seven-year term. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-referendum-2022. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/kazakhs-vote-referendum-curb-ex-leader-nazarbayevs-powers-2022-06-05/, https://www.election.gov.kz/. - 2022: Tokayev orders law-enforcement and the army to shoot to kill without warning. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-shoot-to-kill-2022. Sources: https://apnews.com/article/kazakhstan-law-enforcement-agencies-6dc8df9639367c3845aa00a008072997, https://www.akorda.kz/en. - 2022: Tokayev takes the Security Council chair and requests CSTO assistance. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-csto-request-2022. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/kazakhstan-president-calls-csto-help-quell-protests-2022-01-05/, https://www.akorda.kz/en. - 2019: Snap election returns Tokayev with 70.96 percent official. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-election-2019. Sources: https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/kazakhstan/434389, https://www.election.gov.kz/. - 2019: Nazarbayev resigns; Tokayev becomes acting president. https://factrail.ai/facts/kz-tokayev-acting-2019. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kazakhstan-president-idUSKCN1R01Y20190319, https://www.akorda.kz/en/speeches/internal_political_affairs/in_speeches_and_addresses/statement-of-the-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan-nursultan-nazarbayev. ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/kassym-jomart-tokayev