Kazakhstan is not an American ally, that's Uzbekistan, the country where we (USA + UK) send all of our prisoners captured in Afghanistan to get boiled alive (literally) and tortured, sometimes to death. In return we let their President boil dissidents alive under the guise of the war on terror. He is rather friendly with Putin these days however, having snubbed us over oil.
Kazakhstan is actually like a kind of Belarus of the East - their president Nazarbayev is basically Russian like Lukashenko i.e. prefers Russian culture, Russian language and so on and is very much a friend of Putin. After all Kazakhstan was a heavily Russified country, like Belarus. He is the second of the two great non-Russian (in all but name) proponents of Neo-Soviet stuff like the Union State and CIS. Did I mention he's very authoritarian, rather totalitarian, corrupt and oppressive and enjoys putting members of his family in positions of power, leaving bits of himself entrenched everywhere like a kind of political Norton Antivirus? He's an Eastern Lukashenko without a moustache.
All these guys have the same things in common and appeal to the same kinds of people. They're there to keep the bad guys out, so no matter how bad it gets at least they seem to know what they're doing, and appear to be rooting out corruption, even if they are a bit ruthless about it and seem to be targeting their political enemies over anyone else. Who cares if you don't have as much democracy? Democracy isn't Russian after all, and Russian is the way to be. There's no such thing as "Belarusian" and to be Kazakh would involve tribal chieftans and khans. So uncivilised. You should be glad we invaded you and subjugated you and exploited your land for everything it was worth,
leaving it an environmental disaster zone; you did need a wash.