On Bektenov’s figures, the EAEU’s gross domestic product grew 1.1% in the first half of 2026 against the same period of 2025, fixed-capital investment rose 17% in current prices to $244.5 billion, industrial output reached $938.6 billion and manufacturing $630.9 billion. Mishustin added that mutual trade grew 10% from January to July.
Kazakhstan chairs the union’s bodies this year, and Bektenov chaired the sitting. He said the chairmanship works from the tasks Tokayev set out in his address to the heads of state, and named external trade and transport connectivity as the day’s questions. The release from his office lists documents signed in trade, energy and industry and a memorandum between the Eurasian Economic Commission and the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development, prints no title for any of them, and sets the next sitting for December in Moscow.
Armenia was present on a screen.
Interfax had billed the meeting as the 48th since the union began and the third of 2026, after the one in Kyrgyzstan on 6 and 7 August. The agenda it announced was transport and logistics, an updated list of priority integration projects, electronic documentation at maritime border crossings and the Commission’s reports on 2025 mutual trade and industrial cooperation, and the Kazakh readout confirms that order of business.
Kyrgyzstan’s Adylbek Kasymaliev sat in the narrow format with Bektenov, Belarus’s Alexander Turchin, Mishustin and the Commission’s Bakytzhan Sagintayev, his cabinet’s press service said. At the plenary of Innoprom, the industrial exhibition running in Minsk alongside the council, he proposed joint production in 5 fields, machinery, electrical equipment, building materials, pharmaceuticals and light industry, and offered Kyrgyzstan’s numbers: industrial output up from $4.024 billion in 2021 to $9.014 billion in 2025, 287 enterprises opened in 3 years with about $2 billion of investment and about 21,000 jobs, 47 more due by the end of 2026. The China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway and Kambar-Ata-1 were his examples of the demand for equipment.
Armenia was present on a screen. Armenpress reported at 11:58 that Pashinyan was taking part by video link, and News.am quoted him telling the council that the TRIP route is a key part of his Crossroads of Peace, that it would open direct rail between Armenia and Azerbaijan and link the Gulf to the Black Sea, and that this would be “an epochal event in transport links, a change for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran”.
Lukashenko spoke to the heads of delegations at a collective meeting on the sidelines, and News.am reported the words he addressed to the Armenian side. “If you have decided on the European Union, what is the hurry? Have you worked out exactly where your brandy will go, where your vegetables and fruit will go?” he said, and asked whether Armenia could replace on the EU market the volumes it sells today in the union. “Why are you running? Why put the cart before the horse?”
Freight was the subject every delegation brought. Kazakhstan’s agenda was transport connectivity, digital corridors and electronic paperwork at maritime crossings, Bektenov’s own showpiece was a transport sector whose gross output tripled in 5 years to more than 14 trillion tenge, Kasymaliev’s examples were a railway and a dam, Pashinyan’s pitch was a railway, and the one member not in the room was the one being asked where its brandy will go. The nearest decision Lukashenko’s question could have meant is the EU Council’s two-year duty-free entry for Armenian goods, adopted on 24 September.
Uzbekistan, an observer, came to Minsk for the exhibition. Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov told Innoprom’s plenary session that the country’s electrical-engineering exports have passed $1 billion to 65 countries, that output has grown more than 9 times in recent years, and that the target for 2030 is $11 billion of output and $5 billion of exports with more than $3 billion of investment, UzA reported.
The Moscow sitting in December is the next date. Before it come Armenia’s local elections on 25 October, with the parliamentary election due in June 2027, the texts of the documents Astana’s release lists without titles, and the Commission’s 2025 trade report, heard on Friday, if it is published with its country breakdown.