Protests that began in western Kazakhstan over a sharp rise in fuel costs have turned into days of upheaval, with demonstrators storming government buildings and the airport in Almaty, the country’s largest. That’s bad enough for President Vladimir Putin, who is wary of unrest on Russia’s fringes. But the crisis in what has been one of the region’s most stable countries is not about inflation alone. It’s a more volatile anger over rampant elite corruption, slow change and inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic — much of that directed at the 81-year-old former president and “father of the nation,” Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The parallels with Putin are imperfect but they are uncomfortable enough, and will only serve to tighten his grip over his own country. Putin will be encouraged to bolster the state and his much-vaunted vertical of power further, eliminating all alternatives. The Kazakh government’s request for support from a Russian-led military alliance will also strengthen the Russian president’s hand in the wider region, leaving another neighbor beholden to Moscow, if not quite with the dependence of Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus.

This is not good news for the West. Unfortunately, intervention from that quarter is unlikely to change the outcomes and could make them worse. Kazakhstan is strategically important, as a mineral-rich state sitting between Russia and China. But this is not a country torn by the geopolitical tensions seen in Ukraine or Belarus, both in the heart of Europe. Western criticism of obvious democratic shortcomings has long been limited. The U.S. and Europe also have little leverage despite significant investments in the oil and gas industry. Clumsy intervention will simply feed claims that demonstrators are agitators, supported by outsiders.

The situation on the ground remains volatile. Protests have spread swiftly in a sparsely populated country roughly the size of Western Europe, spinning out of control into scenes of chaos. Brutal repression is underway. Despite early footage of police siding with demonstrators, the leaderless protesters do not appear to have the support of Kazakhstan’s security apparatus. Citing supposed acts of terrorism, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev took the rare step of requesting help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a loose post-Soviet alliance. He has promised to act “harshly”and he now has Russian “peacekeeping” troops to back him.

The crisis is also an unexpected headache for Putin and an unwelcome distraction. Ukraine and concerns on Russia’s western border remain a priority, and the focus of key talks coming with the U.S., NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. That said, Russia’s leader is likely to take away clear lessons from Kazakhstan’s turmoil.

First, it’s a demonstration of the perils of power sharing. Nazarbayev, who ran Kazakhstan as a fiefdom for nearly three decades ceded the presidency in 2019, but continued to set the political direction. It was supposedly an innovative gambit — a controlled exit in a region where autocrats don’t retire — and was posited as one of several potential paths for Putin. It’s proved a dramatic miscalculation.

Tatiana Stanovaya of R.Politik, a political analysis firm, points out Nazarbayev’s mistake in Putin’s eyes was to weaken the presidency. The subsequent debacle will encourage Putin to bolster the structures that support Russia’s own leadership, the security services and the state in general, allowing no alternative centers of power.

Then there’s the consequence of Moscow actually answering the Kazakh government’s distress call to the CSTO, testing a provision that allows intervention to assist with domestic unrest, under specific conditions. The Kremlin would no doubt prefer to avoid this situation, not least because it risks irking China. And Russia will limit the role played by its troops. Yet CSTO involvement creates a precedent and bolsters an alliance that has until now stayed out of other protests and border skirmishes; It allows Russia to play the role of regional protector — one that Putin relishes.

Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.