https://novayagazeta-ru.translate.goog/articles/2022/01/05/v...

I found the explanation of this article quite convincing.

The key takes is: Tokayev, the Kazakhstan's president, does not completely trust his own forces and is afraid they might be more loyal to the old president, or the elites might see him as weak and try to plot against him. Therefore, he asks Putin for his armed forces to assist in stabilizing the situation. This is good for both of them: Tokayev stabilizes his position and gets some time to fire or prosecute the officials he doesn't trust, and Putin gains more influence over Tokayev in the future — Tokayev becomes dependent on Putin's support.

Over the last two days, Tokayev has made some big changes in the government structure. For example, he fired the old president Nazarbayev from his current position of The Chairman of the Security Council (which he technically wasn't authorized to do). The old president hasn't made any public response to that, and is rumored to have escaped to Europe with his whole family (flightradar has shown a few private jets leaving the country as the riots got violent). Tokayev has also removed some of the Nazarbayev's people (people who served under Nazarbayev for a long time) from their positions yesterday; one big example is Massimov, the head of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee, the country's main intelligence service.

Watching the local news closely these last days, I'm getting convinced that someone is orchestrating the violence and shooting on the streets. There's a footage of people handing out firearms to the protestors (it looks more like hunting rifles and shotguns, so it must be the loot from the firearm stores; but some of them have combat AKs they captured from the police, one video shows them having an RPG grenade). And those armed people with no uniforms are too organized: they give actual armed fights to the police and army forces — not something you could expect from a spontaneously gathered crowd. The organization and determination are shocking: they move from one government building to another, seizing things, burning cars and buildings, focusing on important ones (firearm stores, police offices, city administration) in the situation where mobile broadband is off. Yesterday, the government has withdrawn its forces from the city (friends of my friends who are in the police say they were ordered not to wear uniforms) and evacuated the main buildings. Today they are entering back and fighting the bandits, they report that a few groups were already eliminated.

Having said this, obviously not everyone who's out on the streets now is one of those organized bandits. There are many people who genuinely came for a peaceful protest before it was hijacked into what it is now, and there's also people who are seizing the opportunity to loot and wreak havoc unpunished and drunk (what comes to mind is the video of a guy trying to set a traffic light on fire using a gas burner).

Disclaimer: I'm not in Kazakhstan right now, but I'm watching the situation closely through media and my friends there

EDIT: Removed the news of TV broadcast tower being stormed, it turned out to be fake