Kazakhstan is taking fresh steps to organise its territorial defence forces. On September 14, the government issued a decree modifying the Ministry of Emergency Situations’ mandate to include responsibility for coordinating territorial defence.

The territorial defence forces are designed to support the country’s regular army in a national emergency, functioning in some ways like state national guards in the United States. The emergency ministry’s new responsibilities, as outlined in the resolution, include organising the defence of “subordinate facilities in accordance with territorial defence plans;” providing citizens with early warning about emerging security threats and assisting in civilian evacuations, if necessary; and ensuring “the constant readiness of civil defence bodies to perform territorial defence tasks.”

The ministry is also tasked with promoting activities consistent with “the military-patriotic education system.”

Kazakhstan’s Senate approved legislation bolstering territorial defence forces back in June. The Territorial Defence Act specifies that territorial forces can include law-enforcement officers, special forces and volunteer formations. Local media outlets have reported that units can be deployed during martial law and under war-like conditions without an official government declaration of general mobilisation.

“The law was developed in order to regulate public relations and establish the legal basis for state policy in the sphere of territorial defence,” according to a statement issued by the Senate Committee on International Relations, Defence and Security.

Kazakhstan has been building up its territorial defence force amid a spate of incidents involving drone incursions into Kazakhstani territory. Kazakhstani defence officials have confirmed that at least one of the drones violating the country’s airspace was Russian. 

Around the time of the Territorial Defence Act’s passage in the Senate, Russia accused Kazakhstan of allowing Ukrainian drones to fly over its airspace to attack Russian targets. Russian Telegram channels also speculated that Kazakhstan was tacitly complicit in a stunning Ukrainian attack on Russian air bases in Siberia and the Far East that severely damaged the Russian strategic bomber fleet. Kazakhstani officials have denied the Russian allegations.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.