Analysis
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Uzbekistan drafts a 30% heating rise from 1 November and a million soums for the poorest
Uzbekistan has published two drafts for public comment, a cabinet resolution on tariffs and a presidential decree on social support, that set the terms of its move to market energy prices. Heating and hot water rise about 30% from 1 November, with Tashkent’s heating tariff at 314 soums per square metre a day. Families in the social registry get a one-off 1 million soums in November.
Tajikistan’s parliament moves the only Central Asian ICC member toward the exit
The lower house of Tajikistan’s parliament has voted to withdraw from the Rome Statute, Asia-Plus reported on 14 October, four weeks after the chamber’s council listed a draft resolution to that effect, and the chamber has printed nothing. Tajikistan is the only Central Asian state that ratified the treaty, and in November 2025 the court’s pre-trial chamber asked it to explain why Vladimir Putin was not arrested in Dushanbe.
Rubio brings 200 business leaders to Samarkand as the Graham act’s 30-day deadline arrives
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be in Samarkand between 17 and 22 October for the C5+1 ministerial, bilateral meetings with all five governments and a delegation of more than 200 business leaders, the State Department said on 13 October. Sunday 18 October is the thirtieth day of the Graham act, the deadline it sets for the president’s first duties on the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas.
Kallas calls the EU’s Georgia policy short on both counts and returns to it in January
The EU’s current approach to Georgia neither creates sufficient pressure for change nor lets the bloc fully pursue its European strategic interests, Kaja Kallas said after the foreign ministers’ council in Luxembourg on Monday, and the ministers will return to it in January. In the Council’s own summary that reads as grave concern and an in-depth discussion expected in January. The governing party answered before she spoke and after.
Mirziyoyev moves the ministries to New Tashkent, where entrepreneurs have 94 hectares
Shavkat Mirziyoyev told the prime minister on Monday to start moving the remaining ministries and state bodies to New Tashkent, three years into a project that has absorbed more than $2 billion from all sources, with the state paying for most of the 1,000 hectares under construction. Entrepreneurs have been allotted 94 hectares, the president said, and private business is being drawn in more slowly than the opportunities allow.
Tokayev dissolves every maslikhat in Kazakhstan, with new elections due by 12 December
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the decree ending the powers of every maslikhat in Kazakhstan on Monday, after the consultations with the prime minister and the Kurultai’s chairman that article 88 of the new constitution requires. The Central Election Commission must now call early elections of all local councils and, under article 101 of the election law, hold them within two months, by 12 December.
WHO leaves the Irkutsk death unexplained while the region’s plague watch stays on
The World Health Organization’s outbreak notice of 10 October classifies the death of a laboratory worker in Irkutsk as pneumonia of undetermined aetiology, finds no evidence of transmission and says a laboratory exposure “cannot be fully excluded”. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia kept border controls and anti-plague stations on alert for a week. That watch is a Soviet inheritance, and its running cost is the figure the open record lacks.
Russia reopens diesel exports for 500,000 tonnes while a US licence runs to April
Russia’s government partly lifted its diesel export ban on Saturday, for 500,000 tonnes from 10 October, to carry out what Putin and Trump agreed by telephone on Friday. OFAC had licensed the sale, delivery and import of Russian-origin diesel the day before, through 7 April 2027. Neither document says whether the 500,000 tonnes stand beside or count against the duty-free balances under which Russian fuel reaches Kazakhstan.
Two ex-GKNB officers held on corruption suspicion as Japarov replaces his frontier chiefs
A Bishkek court ordered a month in custody on Saturday for Kurbanbek Avazov, first deputy chairman of the State Committee for National Security until February, and Kanybek Dosmambetov, the former health minister who ran its Jalal-Abad directorate, both suspected of corruption under article 336. On Friday Sadyr Japarov replaced the heads of the customs and border services, and on Monday he said about 15 of their officers were in custody.
Five presidents create a Caspian commission as Aliyev and Putin differ on the cause
The first Caspian Ecological Summit ended on Friday with a decision by the five heads of state to create a commission of three deputy prime ministers and senior Iranian and Russian representatives on the sea’s falling level, which meets first in Azerbaijan in the first half of 2027. Aliyev named reduced river flow and man-made factors among the causes beside the climate, Putin named climate change the main one.
CIS leaders sign 15 documents at Avaza and Azerbaijan is absent from the memory statement
Azerbaijan is not among the eight signatories of the statement on historical memory adopted at Avaza on Friday, by the Kremlin’s text, one of 15 documents signed as the Commonwealth’s 35th-anniversary council handed the chair to Uzbekistan from 1 January and heard Mirziyoyev invite the leaders to Bukhara next year and Aliyev offer to chair in 2028. Iran’s president sat in for the first time.
MEPs pass the Georgia and Azerbaijan resolutions by 445 and 492 votes as Baku protests
Strasbourg adopted the joint motion on Georgian Dream’s lawsuit to ban the opposition parties on Thursday by 445 votes to 37 with 97 abstentions, and the motion on Azerbaijan’s political prisoners by 492 to 23 with 60, by the minutes of the sitting. Within four hours the Milli Majlis called the Azerbaijan text a biased political action, and Georgian Dream’s Irakli Kadagishvili said the resolutions serve narrow political interests.
Six leaders sign two documents at Avaza as Tokayev counts 200 initiatives and few results
The eighth consultative meeting of Central Asia’s heads of state, the first with Azerbaijan as a full member, closed on Thursday with a joint statement and a decision on its own rules, and handed the 2027 chair to Baku. Tokayev told the five that more than 200 initiatives have been raised since 2018 and only a small part carried out, while Putin, Pezeshkian and Lukashenko landed for Friday’s CIS summit.
MEPs vote on Georgia’s party-ban bid and Azerbaijan’s prisoners at noon in Strasbourg
The European Parliament votes between 12:00 and 14:00 Strasbourg time on Thursday on a five-group motion that condemns Georgian Dream’s lawsuit against the opposition parties and names Bidzina Ivanishvili, Irakli Kobakhidze, Shalva Papuashvili and Kakha Kaladze for sanctions, and on a six-group motion on Azerbaijan’s political prisoners that asks the member states to prepare measures under the EU’s human rights sanctions regime. Neither binds anyone outside the chamber.
Avaza’s first day ends with four CIS decisions and no word on the Caspian ministers
The CIS foreign ministers signed four documents at Avaza on Wednesday, among them a decision making 2029 the Commonwealth’s transport year, and fixed their next council for Bishkek in April 2027. Listed for the same day in the host’s programme, the Caspian states’ ministers had no readout on Turkmenistan’s state portal, TDH, the foreign ministry’s site or News Central Asia by Thursday morning as the presidents landed.
On the dry Mongolian Plateau, steadier plant cover comes with less growth, a study finds
A study of 306 grassland sites on the Mongolian Plateau, 286 of them in China’s Inner Mongolia, finds that the drier the site, the more its plants trade biomass for water-use efficiency and steadier greenness. Mongolia measures its own fight against land degradation in trees planted, 140 million so far against a billion promised by 2030.
Georgia’s party-ban suit goes to the full court as Kos calls the candidacy paper-only
The Constitutional Court’s First Chamber has referred Georgian Dream’s lawsuit to ban the opposition parties to the court’s plenum, in a ruling taken without an oral hearing on 6 October that cannot be appealed. That evening Marta Kos called Georgia “a candidate country only on paper”, and the European Parliament debates the attempt to ban them on Wednesday with a vote on Thursday.
The Kremlin confirms a Caspian summit on Friday that Turkmenistan’s programme post omits
Vladimir Putin will speak on 9 October at a Caspian Ecological Summit in Turkmenistan where all five Caspian leaders are to speak and a declaration on the sea’s ecological problems, shallowing included, is expected, his aide Yuri Ushakov said on Tuesday evening. The CIS foreign ministers meet at Avaza on Wednesday with Sergei Lavrov, and the Caspian states’ ministers meet the same day, by the state portal’s programme.
The Middle Corridor is promised billions while its Caspian ferries sail part-empty
Brussels plans to attract up to €12 billion for the Middle Corridor. The sea at its centre has dropped about 2.5 metres in 30 years, Azerbaijan’s Institute of Geography says, and ferries leaving Kazakhstan already sail with part of their cargo space empty. On Wednesday the ministers of the five shore states met in Avaza to discuss it.
Mirziyoyev hears of five gas discoveries and 80 wells as Uzbekistan’s output keeps falling
Uzbekistan has discovered five gas fields and drilled 80 wells this year, with 40 more due in the fourth quarter and 3D seismic work to reach five times last year’s volume, the presidential press service said after Mirziyoyev reviewed the sector’s large projects on 5 October. The readout prints no output figure, no sum and no partner’s name. Gas output was 16.3% lower in January to August.