Protests that began as a response to a fuel price rise swelled this week into a broad movement against Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's paramount leader since Soviet times.
Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former banker and government minister who is leader of an opposition movement called Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, said the West needed to enter the fray.
Wanted at home for fraud and embezzlement, Ablyazov lives in France where he has been granted refugee status.
Ablyazov cast himself as the leader of the opposition protests and said he was consulted every day on tactics on the ground in Almaty.
"I see myself as the leader of the opposition," he said. "Every day the protesters call me and ask: 'What should we do? We are standing here: What should we do?'"
He said he was ready to fly into Kazakhstan to head a provisional government if the protests escalated and said his activists were awaiting him.
