Russia seems to point at things like this to create a silly narrative that their actions are actually America’s fault. Lots of people lap that kind of thing up in the west then excuse Russia for their crap. It’s amazingly effective.
No. A measly $1 million of funding from an American NGO to prodemocracy initiatives in an authoritarian country racked by inflation and other longer running issues is NOT to blame for Putin deciding to invade. Putin makes his own decisions and the people of Kazakhstan have their own agency, they are not stupid puppets of America.
You can argue it's not the proximal cause (which would imply arguing that the only thing the US did was spend a million dollars), but you can't argue that the US was promoting revolution.
The citizens of Kazakhstan, just like the citzens of Syria have their own agency. That doesn't mean you can't get played. Unless you mean that Kazaks have agency but the Syrians and Libyans didn't?
The best we can conclude here is that we don't know if this is or isn't in some way influenced by the US and some other foreign groups inherently. You can't say that the US definitely isn't angling for something here. That's the issue with meddling in other countries politics, people can reasonably suspect you're at fault when things happen.
