The week at the resort beside Turkmenbashi runs in three days: the Council of Foreign Ministers on Wednesday, the consultative meeting of Central Asia’s heads of state and Azerbaijan on Thursday, and the CIS Council of Heads of State and the Caspian summit on Friday. Four papers carry the ministers’ signatures, by Turkmenistan’s state portal in a readout stamped 23:40 on Wednesday: a protocol decision on the next regular session, a decision declaring 2029 the Year of Transport Interconnectedness of the Commonwealth, taken on Turkmenistan’s initiative, a decision on the draft plan for a Year of Legal Enlightenment in 2027, and a decision on a plan of multi-level political consultations between the CIS foreign ministries. The ministers also adopted a statement in support of practical steps to prevent an arms race in outer space, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported at 21:01 from the Russian foreign ministry’s account, which places the next council in Bishkek in April 2027 and sends most of the agreed documents to the heads of state on Friday.
Views diverged on some points and the ministers reached agreement on every question put on the agenda, Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference at Avaza after the sitting, asked by Interfax whether the CIS is still relevant, as the agency carried it at 16:33. Positions never coincide one hundred per cent in any organisation or any pair of states, he said, and the diplomatic culture is to balance them. Rashid Meredov signed programmes of cooperation for 2027 and 2028 with Lavrov and with Belarus’s Maxim Ryzhenkov the same day, according to the portal.
Jeyhun Bayramov took part and spoke, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said through APA at 17:10, naming the CIS’s 35th anniversary, the 2027 to 2028 plan of priority measures with more than 200 events and the East-West and North-South corridors, and he wished Uzbekistan’s Bakhtiyor Saidov success in his country’s coming chairmanship of the Commonwealth. The first word on who chairs the Commonwealth next came from Baku, in a wish to Tashkent. Tajikistan’s Sirojiddin Muhriddin took part, Khovar reported at 18:00, and Armenia, which sent Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan to the April council in Moscow by ARKA’s report of 15 April, had published nothing on its level at Avaza on Armenpress by Thursday morning.
The foreign ministers of Central Asia and Azerbaijan met at Avaza on Wednesday by Baku’s and Dushanbe’s readouts, and the Turkmen foreign ministry’s page, posted at 09:51 on Thursday by its own clock, dates the meeting 8 October. All three accounts say the ministers approved the draft agenda and the list of final documents of Thursday’s consultative meeting, the eighth of the format, and Bayramov spoke of the Caspian’s continued fall as a serious concern for coastal infrastructure, by the APA readout of 18:25.
The first word on who chairs the Commonwealth next came from Baku, in a wish to Tashkent.
A meeting of the Caspian states’ ministers on 7 October, aimed at the sea’s current environmental tasks, is listed in the host’s programme post, as CAW reported on Wednesday. No readout of it had appeared by 08:30 Moscow time on Thursday on the state portal, whose newest post was still Wednesday’s sports item, on the TDH agency’s front, on the foreign ministry’s news list, which ran to the Japarov arrival at number 6366, or on the News Central Asia site. The council’s bilateral meetings, the water commission’s session and a women’s dialogue all have pages for Wednesday on the host’s sites, and the Caspian ministers have none.
Tokayev landed on Wednesday evening and was met at the airport by Meredov, Kazinform reported from Akorda, and Mirziyoyev landed at Turkmenbashi the same evening, met by the same minister, by UzA. Rahmon left Dushanbe on Thursday morning with his first deputy prime minister, his foreign minister and the head of the state material reserves agency, Khovar reported, Japarov arrived on Thursday by the Turkmen foreign ministry’s post, and Ilham Aliyev landed at Turkmenbashi on Thursday morning, met by Meredov, APA reported at 09:22 Baku time.
Putin leaves on Thursday for a two-day working visit, Interfax reported at 00:12 from Yuri Ushakov’s briefing, and talks to Serdar Berdimuhamedov one to one before any event begins. Thursday’s programme is cultural, a festival of the Commonwealth’s national dishes and an official reception in the evening, and Friday is the working day, with the heads of state’s documents on law enforcement, culture, information and foreign-policy coordination, and with Masoud Pezeshkian invited to the enlarged session for the first time in the CIS’s history, Ushakov said.
All five Caspian leaders speak on Friday, Ushakov said, and Russia’s key task, to be named in Putin’s speech, is the preservation of the natural environment and the ecological security of the sea’s waters, with the emphasis on the falling level. A separate meeting with Nikol Pashinyan is not planned, a contact during the events cannot be ruled out, and Putin meets Pezeshkian after the summits end. Ushakov spoke on Tuesday of a declaration on the sea’s ecological problems, Interfax’s account of Wednesday’s briefing carries no such line, and the ministers whose meeting the programme set for Wednesday have no readout to show what the five have put on paper.