President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev refused the Order of Alexander Nevsky, which Russia wanted to award him. This was announced by the Kazakh political scientist Yerbol Yedilov. The information was confirmed to Tengrinews.kz by Tokayev's press secretary Ruslan Zheldibai.

“Yesterday, the Russian side proposed to award Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with the Order of Alexander Nevsky. The head of state thanked for the honor, however, he decided not to accept either domestic or foreign awards until the end of his presidential powers. For the same reason, during a recent visit to Bishkek, the President refused the highest Kyrgyz order “Manas” of the first degree,” Edilov wrote.

However, the press secretary of the President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov , told Rise that Tokaev was not planned to be awarded the order. “I don’t know where this information comes from, because no awards were planned. There were no plans for this,” Peskov said.

Earlier, Tokayev, during his speech at the SPIEF, said that the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" are "quasi-states" that Kazakhstan will not recognize. At that time, Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting next to him. According to Tokayev, the right of nations to create their own states and their desire to secede from existing ones will lead to the division of the world. He noted that for the same reason Kazakhstan does not recognize Taiwan, Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In addition, Tokayev criticized propagandist Tegran Keosayan, husband of SPIEF host Margarita Simonyan, for making negative remarks about Kazakhstan. In April, he accused Kazakhstan of "cunning" and threatened him with the fate of Ukraine for refusing to hold a parade on May 9.