A court in Moscow has issued an arrest warrant for Petro Vrublevskiy, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Kazakhstan, on a charge of inciting hatred.
The court also ruled on March 4 to add Vrublevskiy to Russia's wanted list. Earlier, Vrublevskiy was placed on Russia's registry of terrorists and extremists.
Vrublevskiy found himself at the center of a scandal in August 2022 -- about six months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- after he said in an interview with noted Kazakh blogger Dias Kuzairov that "the more Russians we kill now, the fewer of them our children will have to kill in the future."
Moscow and Russian organizations in Kazakhstan then demanded Astana expel the diplomat for his controversial statement, but the Kazakh authorities refused, though they did ask Kyiv to replace him.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in early October 2022 that Moscow was "outraged" by the fact that Vrublevskiy remained in Kazakhstan, adding that the Kazakh ambassador to Russia had been summoned over the issue.
In response, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said that the tone of Moscow’s request to expel the Ukrainian ambassador was "dissonant to the character of the allied mutual ties between Kazakhstan and Russia as equal strategic partners."
The Kazakh side also said at the time that Astana and Kyiv had a "full understanding" of the situation and that a decision on the diplomat leaving Kazakhstan would be made solely by Kyiv.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry also said at the time it had summoned the Russian ambassador to Kazakhstan over the situation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy fired Vrublevskiy in mid-October 2022.
The Kazakh government under President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has been trying to maintain cooperation with Ukraine, its Western allies, and Russia since Moscow launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
While not openly condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine, Toqaev has publicly stated that his country would not recognize Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Kazakh businesses last year set up so called "invincibility" yurts (traditional nomadic felt tents) in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and several other Ukrainian cities to provide local residents with food, tea, warmth, and the possibility to charge electronic devices.