Kazakh authorities rejected a demand from Russia that they expel Ukraine’s ambassador over comments about killing Russians. Tensions escalated after Ukraine’s ambassador in Astana, Petro Vrublevskiy, said in August in an interview with a local blogger, referring to the war in Ukraine, that “the more Russians we kill now, the fewer of them our children will have to kill”. Russia demanded that Kazakhstan expel the diplomat in response, but Astana instead asked Kyiv to replace him, telling him his comments were unacceptable for a country with a large ethnic Russian minority. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Tuesday said Moscow was “outraged” by the fact that Vrublevskiy was still in Astana, and had summoned the Kazakh ambassador. (https://www.reuters.com/world/kazakhstan-snubs-russian-demand-expel-ukrainian-ambassador-2022-10-05/) Kazakh foreign ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov on Wednesday called Zakharova’s tone “discordant with the nature of the allied relations between Kazakhstan and Russia as equal strategic partners”, adding that the Russian ambassador would in turn be summoned to the Kazakh ministry.