Russia's Putin visits Kazakhstan after remarks questioning statehood cause alarm
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting Kazakhstan to stress the need for close ties, a month after he caused alarm in the former Soviet republic by seeming to question its future as an independent state.
During a meeting Tuesday with President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Putin said the two countries were "connected historically and today by a thousand threads, which unite us and help us develop, supporting each other."
Speaking to young Russians in late August, Putin said Kazakhstan had only become a state under Nazarbayev and was better off in the "big Russian world."
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Russia justified its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine by saying it has a responsibility to protect ethnic Russians outside Russia. Like Ukraine, Kazakhstan has a large ethnic Russian population.