Russia says it will return the skull of a leader of the Kazakh national liberation movement, Keiki Batyr, to Kazakhstan for burial.
Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov said on August 12 that he had asked his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev at talks in Sochi to help return the skull, which is kept in a museum in Saint Petersburg, and that Medvedev had agreed.
Keiki Batyr was a key leader of a Kazakh uprising against tsarist Russia in 1916.
Earlier on August 12, Masimov wrote on Twitter that he planned to ask Moscow to help return to Kazakhstan the skull of the last Khan of the Kazakhs, Kenesary Khan, as well.
Kenesary Khan was elected as the ruler of all Kazakhs in 1841. He led the largest uprising against Russia's colonial troops in Kazakhstan in the 19th century before he was killed in 1847 on the territory of modern Kyrgyzstan.
His head was cut off and sent to Russian authorities in Omsk as a trophy. It is believed that Kenesary Khan's skull might be kept in a museum in Russia as well.
