Kyrgyz Acting President to visit Russia
Acting President of Kyrgyzstan Talant Mamytov will meet with Russian Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin in Moscow today.
An October 6 coup overthrew then-president Sooronbai Jeenbekov’s government and saw political heavyweight Sadyr Japarov become prime minister and acting president of the country. Mamytov, a close political ally of Japarov, assumed the presidency to allow Japarov to run for president in his own right in the upcoming January 2021 elections. Since the revolution, Moscow and Kyrgyzstan have held several high-level meetings through the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to keep open lines of communication between Bishkek and Moscow.
With Japarov’s overwhelming support and an expected win in 2021, today’s meeting is a means to keep Moscow intimately involved in Kyrgyzstan’s future. A Japarov-led government is likely to see a consolidation of power under the president, and pro-Russian policies will remain in place. As a democracy, Kyrgyzstan has struggled to consolidate elections that are free, fair and devoid of corruption. January’s election is the latest chance to democratically elect a leader, but if the polls are fixed, it may signal a Kyrgyz turn to a Russian autocratic model of government.
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