Kazakhstan is now immersed in a geopolitical game and unless the West enters the fray, Russia will bring the Central Asian republic to heel in a type of restored Soviet Union, a former banker who casts himself as the leader of the Kazakh opposition protests told Reuters.

Mukhtar Qabyluly Ablyazov, a former government minister who is now living in Paris, said the West needed to enter the fray.

"If not, then Kazakhstan will turn into Belarus and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will methodically impose his program: the recreation of a structure like the Soviet Union," Ablyazov told Reuters.

Ablyazov cast himself as the leader of the opposition protests and said he was consulted every day on tactics on the ground in Almaty.

"I see myself as the leader of the opposition," he said. "Every day the protesters call me and ask: 'What should we do? We are standing here: What should we do?'"

Kazakhstan, often seen as the most stable state in Central Asia under its first post-Soviet President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has been riven by its most serious protests that have left dozens dead and hundreds detained.

The demonstrations began over a near-doubling of prices for a type of vehicle fuel and quickly spread across the country, reflecting wider discontent over the rule of the same party since independence.

The protests have turned extremely violent, with government buildings set ablaze and scores of protesters and more than a dozen law enforcement officers killed.

Ablyazov, who leads the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (QDT) party, has vociferously encouraged the protests through his social media channels.

"Literally in three days a revolution took place, and it is really a revolution in the public consciousness... and people understood that they are not weak," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

After years of discontent over economic problems, "the pent-up frustration blew up. The moment came and everything exploded."

He said that "no one can say" how much longer the current regime will survive, but "I think that it has a maximum of one more year, maybe a little more. But maybe in two weeks everything changes, no one knows."

Referring to images of statues of Nazarbayev being pulled down as well as Tokayev's move to sack his Cabinet, Ablyazov said, "People now believe that if they unite they can pull down statues and force the government to resign."

Nazarbayev handed over the presidency to Tokayev in 2019 but is still widely believed to have immense influence through his title of leader of the nation.

Amid uncertainty over the former strongman's whereabouts, Ablyazov said he had received information Nazarbayev and his close family had fled to the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) capital of Abu Dhabi after his residence in Kazakhstan's main city of Almaty was stormed. But it was not possible to independently verify the claim.

Sentenced in absentia in Kazakhstan for fraud, embezzlement and for organizing a murder, Ablyazov, 58, lives in France where he has been granted refugee status. He has dismissed the charges against him in Russia and Kazakhstan as politically motivated.

He served as energy minister in the 1990s under Nazarbayev but relations soured. Kazakh authorities say Ablyazov instigated and bankrolled protests in 2016 that forced Nazarbayev to delay unpopular land-ownership reforms.

Ablyazov cast Nazarbayev, who was Kazakh Communist Party chief before becoming president, as a dictator who had led Kazakhstan's people into a geopolitical dead-end while enriching a venal elite.

"Nazarbayev – he is not in the country right now – but it doesn't mean anything because he has telephone and communications - and everyone in power including Tokayev will do what he orders," he said, describing Tokayev as the former president's "furniture".

He said he was ready to go to Kazakhstan to head a provisional government if the protests escalated.

"I would not only return – people keep on asking when I will return and blame me for not returning to lead the protests – but people don't understand how difficult it would be for me to return as Russia has sentenced me to 15 years and Kazakhstan to life," he said.

Ablyazov dismissed suggestions that the West had financed the protests as an attempt to distract attention from the fact that the roots of the protests were domestic.

"I know the Soviet cliche of a Western spy, but I would be happy to be an American or European spy because then we would live like the people in America or Europe – and everyone would laugh," he said. "Sadly the West doesn't help me; the West hinders me."

The first units of Russian forces from a Moscow-led contingent have now arrived in Kazakhstan after Tokayev appealed to the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for help.

Ablyazov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been happy to assist as part of his strategy to "recreate the old USSR" but said that Kazakhs should see the presence of the foreign forces as an "occupation."

"I am urging people to organize strikes and block roads to protest their presence in the country," he said, warning Russia that Kazakhstan risked becoming like Ukraine – where anti-Russian sentiment skyrocketed after Moscow annexed Crimea and pro-Moscow separatists seized two regions in 2014.