Putin taking a risk in Kazakhstan and may hope for reward

Analysis: CSTO may be an alliance but decision to intervene was almost certainly taken in Moscow

The old joke about the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was that it was the only military alliance to attack itself, after its tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 to crush a reform movement there.

With the deployment of troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to Kazakhstan on Thursday, some heard eerie echoes" of the so-called Prague spring of 1968, and the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.