Remember that Putin said not too long ago that Kazakhstan wasn’t a real country.
The Russians colonized Kazakhstan about the same time that the US was bringing New Mexico and the other Western states into the Union.
When I visited K-stan about ten years ago, I had a much better understanding of the Russian presence there, after I mentally compared it to the history of the US in the American Southwest.
P.S. K-stan is a VERY Russian part of the world.