Following a few months in the restorer’s studio, the imposing bronze figure of Kenesary Khan, Kazakhstan’s 19th-century national hero, has returned to his familiar perch on the banks of the Esil River in Astana.

But even in his absence, the batyr has been stirring controversy.

Understanding why requires a brief dive into history.

As the Russian Empire sought to extend and consolidate its control over the Central Asian steppes in the 1830s and 1840s, they were opposed by Kenesary, the Kazakh leader of the struggle to resist colonial encroachment.

In the spring of 1846, Kenesary dispatched an envoy southward to appeal to Kyrgyz feudal lords to join forces against the Russians. (Or face subjugation at his own hands; a detail that hagiographic Kazakh accounts tend to omit).

“The Russians are a numerous people who crush enemies that oppose them. They have become like a rising flood … They are galloping at top speed toward the Ala-Too mountains, the Ili River, and the Chu in the Saryarka uplands,” the envoy told the listening Kyrgyz lords. “Let us prepare to make war together. If we Kazakhs and Kyrgyz unite, then Tashkent, Kokand, and Samarkand will not be able to defy our might for long. I am the khan’s envoy and have given you his command. If you do not unite with us, a large force will come.”

(This quote is a lightly amended extract from The Sabdan Baatir Codex, a compilation of Kyrgyz narratives edited by Professor Daniel Prior).

The Kyrgyz greeted that offer of conditional comradeship with wariness.

The popular account – one that professional historians will bristle at seeing summarized in such crude terms – is that Kenesary eventually wore out the patience of his would-be Kyrgyz allies.

In 1847, he engaged in battle with warriors from the Sarybaghysh tribe, led by Ormon Khan, and lost. It is said that Kenesary was executed by his captors and that his head was handed to the Russians as proof of their fealty to Moscow. The current location of the head is something of a mystery. One theory is that it is languishing in a museum in the Russian city of Omsk.

Hardened grudge-bearers in Kazakhstan have never quite been able to get over the perceived Kyrgyz treachery. In Kyrgyzstan, meanwhile, Kenesary has at times been cast as something of a bully and a sadist. One hair-raising, and quite possibly apocryphal, account relayed in The Sabdan Baatir Codex tells of how a horde of raiders acting at Kenesary’s behest capped their assault on a Kyrgyz camp by attaching the penis of a young man to a horse-saddle and dragging him along the ground until death.

Kyrgyz singer Kairat Primberdiyev should have known full well, therefore, what a hornet’s nest he was kicking in his interview to Kazakh YouTube channel Airan in January.

“Our Ormon Khan was forced to kill Kenesary Khan. Speaking for myself, I just want to apologise to the Kazakh people for what happened,” Primberdiyev said.

The backlash was savage. A few days after the release of the interview, Kyrgyz Deputy Culture Minister Marat Tagayev joined the fray, albeit in measured terms.

“Primberdiyev has fallen for the propaganda of certain Kazakh bloggers by saying that Ormon Khan acted wrongly,” Tagayev said. “It would be good if we could see our country, our Kyrgyz history, literature, past and future, through our own eyes, through the eyes of Kyrgyzstan.”

Primberdiyev tried to limit the fallout by insisting that his remarks only reflected his own views, and that he was not speaking on behalf of all Kyrgyz people.

This reverse-ferret was not sufficient to prevent the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) from getting involved. In February, it filed a criminal case against the singer on charges of inciting ethnic enmity. Primberdiyev was interrogated and ordered to refrain from travel.

Eventually, a court in Bishkek fined him 100,000 soms ($1,100).

But that was not the end of it.

The furore was revived by a lengthy Russian-language video posted on YouTube that once more levelled vitriolic accusations at the Kyrgyz nation for their alleged complicity in Kenesary’s killing.

This prompted Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov to take to social media earlier this month. In a lengthy Facebook post, he accused people who insist on revisiting the Kenesary Khan issue of maliciously attempting to “drive a wedge” between the Kazakh and Kyrgyz people.

Japarov sought to dismantle the mischief-making at length. To begin with, he argued, the conflict between Kenesary and Ormon should not be perceived in ethnic terms.

“In those times,” he wrote, “wars occurred not only between Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, but also within these peoples themselves.”

Elsewhere in the same post, he urged people of both countries to set aside their differences and instead to take pride in their shared heritage.

“The Kyrgyz and Kazakh peoples have always been brothers, kindred nations,” he wrote.

This kind of sentiment is very much in tune with the highly upbeat regionalist tone that Central Asian leaders have latterly adopted when talking about their neighbours.

And then Japarov addressed the elephant in the room: Russia.

Ormon Khan’s defeat of Kenesary was not due to Russian support, but the result of cunning tactics and bravery, he argued. In translation: stop taking potshots at the Russians for their colonial past.

The Kenesary Khan question feels precision-engineered to sow political and emotional discord in any number of directions: Kazakh resentment at the Kyrgyz for alleged treachery; Kyrgyz irritation at the Kazakhs for perceived distortion of historical fact; and Central Asian antipathy toward their Russians for their often-brutal colonial legacy.

The irony of the drama around Primberdiyev was that in the lesser-reported section of his interview to Airan, he issued a call for the return of Kenesary Khan’s head, so that it, and the accompanying controversy, may be buried once and for all.