Mongolia's environment minister counts COP17 at โฎ217 billion of budget, โฎ38.6 billion of it classified, against $1.4 billion of pledges
The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change had โฎ217.1 billion approved for hosting the UN desertification conference in August, of which โฎ38.6 billion was budgeted for procurement classified as a state secret, minister Sandag-Ochir Tsend said at a press conference on Wednesday, gogo.mn reported. Ikon.mn quoted the same minister putting the conference's investment opportunities and pledges at $1.4 billion, about โฎ5 trillion.
Kyrgyzstan's energy minister rules out power rationing with Toktogul at 11.2 billion cubic metres and 4.1 billion kWh of imports planned
The ministry is not considering restrictions on electricity supply for now, Altynbek Rysbekov told journalists on Wednesday, 24.kg reported at 17:09 Bishkek time. The Toktogul reservoir holds 11.2 billion cubic metres, the target before the heating season is 11.5 billion, and 4.1 billion kilowatt-hours of imports from Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are planned for 2026. The same afternoon China's ambassador said deliveries of jet fuel and diesel to Kyrgyzstan began a month ago and will continue, and gave no figures.
Russia's defence minister tells Dushanbe the Afghan border gets special attention and its drone units get Russian help
Andrei Belousov used a reception for the 35th anniversary of Tajikistan's independence on Tuesday evening to say that Moscow pays special attention to strengthening the Tajik-Afghan border and takes an active part in forming the republic's aviation, unmanned-systems and special-purpose units, TASS and Izvestia reported. A week after Putin met Rahmon in Bishkek, the visit put the Russian defence minister in Dushanbe on the eve of the holiday.
Brent clears $100 for the first time since July, with Azeri Light at $108 against the $65 in Baku's budget
Azeri Light printed $108.18 a barrel CIF Augusta in Trend's Wednesday-morning table, 66% above the $65 average written into Azerbaijan's 2026 budget. By 10:25 Moscow time the November Brent contract had passed $100 for the first time since 24 July, Interfax reported. Kazakhstan's budget law runs on $60, and its tenge lost 2.5 tenge against the dollar on the same day.
Drones kill 4 in Novorossiysk and set a fuel-oil terminal alight in the port that ships Kazakhstan's oil
An overnight drone attack on Novorossiysk killed four people, a child among them, and injured 29, the governor of Krasnodar Krai said on Wednesday morning. Ukrainian monitoring channels and satellite heat data placed a fire at the fuel-oil terminal inside the commercial port. The city is the sea end of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, the route for more than 80% of Kazakhstan's oil exports, and no statement on loading had appeared on the consortium's channel by evening; the desk did not reach Transneft.
Yerevan lodges a complaint against Russia's produce bans through the EAEU as Pashinyan leaves for Paris
Armenia has filed a complaint against the restrictions Russia has kept on Armenian goods since May, deputy economy minister Tigran Gasparyan told a briefing on Tuesday, and expects them lifted โwith the help of the mechanisms that operate within the EAEUโ. On Wednesday morning Armenpress reported the prime minister leaving for a working visit to Paris. The Moscow visit the Kremlin announced on Monday has drawn no word from Yerevan's channels that the desk could find.
Kyrgyzstan's parliament confirms Malik Bekturganov as prosecutor general a day before the appeal verdict on Tashiev
The Jogorku Kenesh approved Malik Bekturganov as prosecutor general on Wednesday morning, 24.kg reported at 10:53 Bishkek time. He has run the office as acting prosecutor general since June and was its first deputy from June 2024. On Thursday the Bishkek City Court is expected to rule on the appeals in the ยซletter 75ยป case, where his office is asking 9 years with confiscation for Kamchybek Tashiev and seven others.
Georgia promises to double its ports by 2032 for a corridor whose shallowest link is on the other sea
Georgia's sea ports and terminals handled 13.7 million tonnes in the first 8 months of 2026, 24% more than a year earlier and the best figure in ten years, the economy minister told the Georgia International Maritime Forum in Batumi. The prime minister, at the same opening, set a ten-year target: railway capacity doubled, port capacity doubled, airport capacity tripled, about $7 billion by 2032. The desk's own reading of the route puts its narrowest section across Azerbaijan and the Caspian, at a Kazakh quay whose fenders are broken and whose water is falling, and there the only dated commitment is a dredging contract.
Serbia's president says Uzbekistan's second nuclear plant is being built with China, and Tashkent has named no partner
Aleksandar Vuฤiฤ told the Uzbek-Serbian business forum in Belgrade on Tuesday that Shavkat Mirziyoyev had told him that morning, one to one, that one nuclear plant is being built with the Russians and another with the Chinese, and that this is not enough for him. Uzbekistan's own record holds one plant, at Jizzakh with Rosatom, and a promise made on 17 August to prepare a second, partner unnamed. If the host heard right, Tashkent is copying the formula Astana chose last year: Rosatom for the first plant, CNNC for the second, and the price as the lever between them.
The upstream no longer asks: what the Nile's war of nerves means for the Amu Darya
On 9 September the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam turns one and Tajikistan turns 35. The dates share a plot: a poor upstream state builds the largest thing it has ever built on a river the downstream lives by. Egypt answered with letters to the Security Council and got a year of arguments about floods. Uzbekistan answered with a railway, a gas valve and a decade of threats, then settled for a 20-year tariff with the World Bank's money behind the dam. On the Amu Darya's other bank a third builder has taken the Ethiopian script line for line, and there is no bank, no tariff and no treaty with which to buy it.
Tashkent and Belgrade adopt a labour-migration agreement and a 2026 to 2028 industrial plan, with a free-trade deal proposed
Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Aleksandar Vucic closed their Belgrade talks on Tuesday by welcoming the adoption of an agreement on mobility and labour migration and adopting a joint action plan on industrial partnership for 2026 to 2028, the presidential press service said in UzDaily's account; a free-trade agreement is proposed for drafting, and the opening of diplomatic missions is named as an important step. Trade between the two countries was $41.9 million in 2025.
Kazakhstan and China sign a policing agreement for the Khorgos trade centre after 14 years of talks
Interior minister Yerzhan Sadenov signed an intergovernmental agreement on security and public order at the Khorgos International Centre of Boundary Cooperation on a working visit to Beijing on 7 September, the ministry said; its spokesman told Tengrinews on Tuesday that the negotiation had taken 14 years. A second agreement gives mutual recognition to the two countries' driving licences.
Mongolia's fuel headquarters counts 19,853 tonnes of petrol in September's first week and queues of 105 cars in Bayan-Ulgii
The emergency headquarters on fuel supply reported on Tuesday that 19,853 tonnes of AI-92 crossed the border in the first week of September, and ordered more fuel into five aimags where the average queue at a station runs 85 to 105 vehicles, against 54 elsewhere.
Rahmon's 35-year ledger runs in somoni: GDP up 100 times, budget revenue up 250 times, energy independence in 2027
In his address for Tajikistan's 35th independence day, published by Khovar at noon on Tuesday, Emomali Rahmon put GDP at 177 billion somoni in 2025 against 1.8 billion in 2000, state budget revenue at 65 billion somoni this year against 252 million, and the arrival of "energy independence" at the third Rogun unit in 2027. The multipliers are nominal sums in somoni; the dollar ledger the World Bank keeps reads $17.6 billion of GDP, and remittances at 47.9% of it.
The Kremlin books Pashinyan for Moscow, and puts the referendum he dropped back on the agenda
Vladimir Putin invited Nikol Pashinyan to Moscow and Pashinyan accepted, Dmitry Peskov said on Monday; the two leaders, in his words, will discuss "the choice of the direction of development, Armenia's orientation" and "the holding of the corresponding referendum". A week earlier in Bishkek the Armenian prime minister had taken that referendum off his table. Moscow has now put it on its own, with no date attached.
Ashgabat sets 9 September for the cotton harvest and hears five governors give the same report
President Serdar Berdimuhamedov held a working meeting on Monday with vice-premier T. Atahallyev and the five provincial governors on the harvest and the wheat sowing, the state site reported; the vice-premier said the cotton picking is scheduled to begin on 9 September, and the president ordered the wheat sown to agrotechnical deadlines and the construction timed to the independence anniversary later this month finished on time. No readout of a Cabinet sitting has appeared on the state sites for Friday 4 September, the second Friday running.
Tajikistan lays the first stone of a 50,000-tonne refining line against last year's 1.21 million tonnes of imports
A processing line rated at 50,000 tonnes of oil products a year was founded on Saturday at Salosa LLC in Jaikhun district, Khatlon, the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources said in a report carried by Asia-Plus on Monday. The company makes road bitumen from its own heavy crude and plans diesel and petrol once the line and new equipment are in; the Antimonopoly Service's import figure for 2025, 1.21 million tonnes worth $959.3 million and about 84% of it Russian, sizes the line at 4% of a year's imports.
Armenia sends the Catholicos back to Armavir, where he is charged with defying one court order
The Court of Cassation has ruled that the criminal case against Garegin II and six bishops belongs to the court of first instance of Armavir province, because the acts charged were committed at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Armenpress reported at 19:45 on Monday. The charge is a single article: part 2 of article 507 of the criminal code, obstructing the enforcement of a judicial act in force through the use of official powers. Behind it stands one bishop, Gevorg Saroyan, whom the Catholicos defrocked in January while a court order kept him in his post.
Kyrgyzstan puts a 74.5 billion som price on its melting glaciers
A decree signed by President Sadyr Japarov creates a fund for the protection of Kyrgyzstan's glaciers and Lake Issyk-Kul, 24.kg reported on Tuesday morning, five days after the environment ministry published a draft National Adaptation Plan to 2035 costed at 74.5 billion som ($852 million), 54% of it expected from foreign grants and climate funds. The decree gives the cabinet until 1 October to say what the fund is and where its money comes from.