President: Kazakhstan’s capital will again be called Astana

MOSCOW (AP) — Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has agreed to restore the former name of the country’s capital just three years after he renamed it in honor of his predecessor, his spokesman said Tuesday. One of Tokayev’s first moves upon becoming president in 2019 after Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down was to call for renaming the capital from Astana to Nur-Sultan. Nazarbayev, who led Kazakhstan for three decades under the Soviet Union and following independence in 1991, relocated the capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997. The move was widely questioned because of the city’s relative isolation in the northern steppes and notoriously frigid winters in which temperatures plunge as low as minus-51 C (minus-60 F).