Kazakhstan's Energy Minister, Yerlan Akkenzhenov, has dismissed the theory that a massive power outage in Almaty could have been caused by a concert by American rapper Kanye West. According to him, such a hypothesis was never even considered, reports infohub.kz.
The minister drew a comparison: the Atyrau oil refinery consumes about 90 megawatts, while the outage in Almaty cut off 600 megawatts. The stage power for the performance, he estimated, is only 5–10 megawatts, which cannot affect the stability of the southern region's energy system.
Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, the Gazprom Arena announced the cancellation of Kanye West's concerts scheduled for October 10 and 11. The show's organizers, Say Agency, claim they have not received official notification of the termination of agreements. According to them, they were supposed to sign the lease agreement by August 27, but that did not happen.
Say Agency insists that the concerts will still take place. However, Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, posted a photo of the rapper on her Telegram channel with a caption about the cancellation of performances, accompanied by the phrase "I serve Russia." This suggests that the decision to cancel may have been made at a high level, possibly due to the artist's work not aligning with traditional Russian values.
Recall that on August 14, due to an accident, most areas of Almaty experienced a power outage, and in the evening heavy rain and wind began. Due to the bad weather, the Kanye West concert, which was scheduled for that day, was postponed to August 15. During the performance, fireworks were set off, causing some spectators to be injured. Producer Bayan Alaguzova also expressed dissatisfaction with the different conditions for organizing concerts for domestic and foreign performers.