The order Akorda published on Monday morning is one sentence long: Aitkurman Zholamanovich Omarbekov is appointed first deputy minister of defence and chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, and relieved of the post he held before. The post he held until Monday was deputy head of the State Guard Service, the force that protects the president.
By orders dated Saturday 3 October, Kanysh Abubakirov was relieved as first deputy minister and chief of the General Staff, Almaz Dzhumakeev as deputy minister of defence and Kanat Niyazbekov as commander-in-chief of the Naval Forces. Akorda printed no reason for any of the three.
The post he held until Monday was deputy head of the State Guard Service, the force that protects the president.
The calendar supplies what the orders do not. Fourteen servicemen died on 24 September in the Khazar Korgany-2026 exercise on the Caspian, swept into the sea from the patrol boat Qaisar during a disembarkation in bad weather 43 km from Aktau, by the interior ministry’s account. On 27 September, by decree 1507, Tokayev relieved defence minister Dauren Kosanov, appointed Aidos Myrzakhmetov in his place and gave him 10 days to produce a reform plan and 7 days for an inspection commission’s first results.
Five naval officers are detained, by the same account of 25 September, over the alleged violation of the rules of navigation with grave consequences and a negligent attitude to service, article 453 part 2 and article 465 of the Criminal Code, which carry up to 5 and up to 7 years.
Saturday’s orders fell on the sixth day of the commission’s seven. Niyazbekov commanded the service whose five officers are in detention. The chief of the General Staff and a deputy minister went with him, which emptied the ministry’s military leadership below the minister within 9 days of the deaths.
Omarbekov’s biography, as Kazinform printed it from Akorda, has no army command in it. Born in 1977 in Abai region, he graduated from the Military University of the Russian defence ministry and holds a law degree from the Eurasian Humanitarian Institute. He served in the Republican Guard from 1997 to 2014 and in the State Guard Service from 2014, became its acting deputy head in January 2022 and deputy head in February 2022, and was made a major general of the guard by decree 1057 of 22 October 2022.
His new minister came by a similar route. Myrzakhmetov came to the ministry from the Special Operations Forces, which he had commanded since early 2024, and had been a major general since May. Both came to the top of the ministry from forces with their own chains of command, the guard that protects the president and the Special Operations Forces, and neither from an army district.
The guard itself was restaffed the same morning. Azamat Khasenov was appointed deputy head of the State Guard Service and commander of its Special Purpose Forces by a separate order.
The orders are as notable for what they leave out: no successor to Niyazbekov at the Naval Forces or to Dzhumakeev was named by Monday morning, and nothing has been published on whether the detained officers have been remanded. Nor have the commission’s first results, which the decree’s 7 days put at around 4 October.
The 10 days Tokayev gave his minister run out on Wednesday 7 October. The plan is the next document due, and the orders of the weekend do not say what the new chief of staff is meant to change.