Kazakh President Tokayev on Putin:

I have very good relations with President Putin. I consider him, one might say, an outstanding statesman.

And today I said with considerable conviction that President Putin, as a statesman and as the leader of Russia, is the most acceptable political figure — strange as this may sound to you — for Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, in my view, and for Europe and for the whole world.

I know him very well, and he possesses the qualities most necessary for the leader of a large state with a complicated history and its own understanding of the strategic goals facing that country.