The Ozbekiston-24 state television channel and other state media outlets in Uzbekistan reported over the weekend that former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev visited the Uzbek city of Bukhara last week, where it said he held "unofficial" talks with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev.
Nazarbaev disappeared from public life and the political scene after unprecedented antigovernment protests in 2022.
Neither Nazarbaev's website nor his representatives said anything about the September 6 trip.
There did not appear to be any coverage of the visit among Kazakh media outlets.
It remains unclear what Nazarbaev and Mirziyoev discussed.
Nazarbaev, 84, resigned as president in 2019, picking longtime ally Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev as his successor. But he retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council, enjoying almost limitless powers as "elbasy," the leader of the nation.
Meanwhile, many of his relatives continued to hold important posts in the government, security agencies, and profitable business and energy groups.
SEE ALSO: Uzbekistan's Increasingly Influential First Daughter Seen As Successor To President MirziyoevNazarbaev and his clan lost influence in the oil-rich Central Asian nation after unprecedented antigovernment protests in January 2022, which started over a fuel price hike and spread across Kazakhstan over underlying discontent over the cronyism that had long plagued the country.
At least 238 people were killed across Kazakhstan, mostly in the country’s largest city, Almaty, after the protests turned violent.
Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of the security council role, taking it over himself.
Since then, several of Nazarbaev's relatives and others close to the family have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.
SEE ALSO: Relatives Fear Discussing Ethnic Kazakh Intelligentsia Behind Bars In China's XinjiangCritics said at the time that Toqaev's initiatives were mainly cosmetic and would not change the nature of the autocratic system in a country beleaguered for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.
In December 2023, Nazarbaev unexpectedly appeared in Moscow, where he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before that, Nazarbaev had met with Putin in Moscow in June 2022.
Weeks before the deadly unrest in Kazakhstan and two months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nazarbaev, Toqaev, and authoritarian Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka held talks with Putin in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg.