Kazakhstan to change name of its capital from Nur-sultan back to Astana

Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has agreed to restore the former name of the country’s capital city three years after he renamed it in honour of his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev,  his spokesperson said on Tuesday. 

Tokayev’s spokesman, Ruslan Zheliban, has suggested that  the president agreed to the name change after a proposal by a group of MPs.

One of Tokayev’s first decisions upon taking office back in 2019 after president Nazarbayev stepped down was to change the name of the capital city. 

Nazarbayev, who had run the country for three decades under the Soviet Union and after it gained independence in 1991, relocated the capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997.