The chairman of Kazakhstan’s unregistered Algha Kazakhstan (Forward Kazakhstan) party, Marat Zhylanbaev, has been sent to pretrial detention for two months instead of being released after serving a 20-day jail term. He was jailed for holding a picket in March to demand the release of political prisoners and to ask Western nations to impose sanctions on top Kazakh officials for "helping" Russia evade sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. A court in Astana ruled on May 25 that Zhylanbaev must stay in custody until July 23 on charges of taking part in a banned group's activities and financing an extremist organization.

The chairman of Kazakhstan’s unregistered Algha Kazakhstan (Forward Kazakhstan) party, Marat Zhylanbaev, was not released on May 23 despite serving out a 20-day jail term he was handed for holding a picket in March to demand the release of political prisoners and for Western nations to impose sanctions on top Kazakh officials for "helping" Russia evade sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Several police officers and men in civil clothes searched Zhylanbaev's home in Astana on May 23. They confiscated a memory stick, a telephone, and several T-shirts emblazoned with Algha symbols, Zhylanbaev's relatives say.