Amendments to the Friendship Agreement between Kazakhstan and Russia will be purely administrative

The amendments to the Agreement of Friendship between Kazakhstan and Russia will have an administrative nature Tengrinews.kz reports citing first deputy head of the Government Administration of Russia Sergey Prikhodko. “Why discussing it? Foreign Ministry is working on the documents. I don’t even understand why there is such a question. This is a routine,” Prikhodko answered the journalist’s question whether the Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between Russia and Kazakhstan was discussed during Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Astana. “The routine is in process of preparation of the protocols. This is an administrative work. There might be some changes in the protocol, but there is no politicization in that. I don’t quite understand why the issue is being raised at all. The amendments will be made, as 20 years have passed and there was no Customs Union back then and it was a totally different time. The amendments in the protocol will be meant only to update it to the new grid,” he noted. Earlier Nursultan Nazarbayev talked about the necessity to update the Friendship Agreement binding Kazakhstan and Russia. Meanwhile, the journalists were interested why Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did not come to Astana as planned. Answering the question of Russian journalist “Is there any offense from Kazakhstan part that Dmitry Medvedev replaced Vladimir Putin in the trip?” Sergey Prikhodko tagged it stupid. “I cannot answer this question because of its meaninglessness. It is a meaningless and stupid question; I am shocked by its stupidity. You make up the scheme you like and live in the clouds far from the reality,” Prikhodko said. Russia’s Prime-Minister Dmitry Medvedev met with Nursultan Nazarbayev and his Kazakhstan counterpart Karim Massimov in Astana on May 29. By Renat Tashkinbayev