All News
Every published article, newest first.
Half of Ulaanbaatar’s cars come off the road the day the fuel cap lapses
From 15 August to 12 September, city wide and with no zoning, cars may enter Ulaanbaatar traffic only on alternating days by plate parity, between 07:00 and 21:00. The window covers the desertification conference, the start of the school year, and the morning the petrol rationing expires. Nobody has published how many days of fuel the country holds.
Uzbekistan is guest of honour at a gathering Ankara does not convene
The Kurultaj opens on the Bugac puszta today. Tomorrow’s ceremony lists the secretary general of the Organization of Turkic States, the culture ministers of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, the president of TURKSOY and one Turkish party official. The host is a Hungarian foundation and the mayor of a village of two thousand.
Kyrgyzstan’s president says his own anti-corruption billions were overcounted
Sadyr Japarov told an interviewer this week that the four billion dollars attached to five years of confiscations was inflated by the valuations, and that he warned his security chief about it at the time. An audit is now running to establish how much the state actually holds and how little of it has sold.
Telegram went dark across Kazakhstan and nobody will name the cause
The messenger failed nationwide on Thursday morning, nine days before the parliamentary vote. The state operator says its own network was fine, the ministry says technicians are looking into it, and after service returned the operator answered the question directly: we do not know.
Novorossiysk halts its trains and its grain, and Kazakh oil keeps loading
Russian Railways closed loading toward the port for ten days on Thursday. One grain terminal stopped work the same day, another is repairing damage, and the harbour shuts twice today for live artillery practice. Kazakhstan’s crude leaves from a mooring fifteen kilometres west of all of it, and it is the one flow nobody has suspended.
EcoIslamicBank's EU ban takes effect today, unmentioned in Bishkek
The European Union's transaction ban on EcoIslamicBank enters force today. It was listed on 23 July in the twenty-first sanctions package, for using Russia's financial messaging system to help Moscow work around sanctions, with a wind-down of roughly three weeks.
Nobody in Tatarstan's government has said the word citizenship
Tatarstan began paying compensation for the Nizhnekamsk deaths on Wednesday. One outlet reports that the money goes to every family regardless of citizenship. That sentence appears in no primary text the desk can find.
Ankara's condolences on 10 August went to Colombia
Eight Uzbek citizens and one Tajik citizen were killed at Nizhnekamsk on 10 August. The Turkish foreign ministry issued a condolence statement that day, numbered 155, about an earthquake in Colombia. It has published four releases since 10 August and none of them mentions the nine.
Mongolia's ask at the summit it is paying to host is Gobi water
The national committee for COP17 met for the nineteenth time in Ulaanbaatar on Thursday morning, four days before the desertification conference opens. Mongolia has put 250 billion tugrik of state money into hosting it, about $70 million at the rate the desk logged on 5 August. What it wants out of the fortnight is financing to extend water supply in the Gobi.
Kazakhstan's parties debated as teams for the first time, and no one printed the promises
Seven parties put up two speakers each on Jibek Joly on Wednesday night, in the first team debates Kazakhstan has held. Adilet took 60.6% of the viewer poll that closed with the broadcast. The round in which each party made one concrete pledge has not been reproduced by any outlet that covered it.
The record rate to ship Kazakh oil is $440,948 a day
Daily earnings for a tanker running from Novorossiysk to Augusta reached $440,948 on Wednesday, the highest figure in a Baltic Exchange series that begins in July 2008. Washington's undertaking with Kyiv, three weeks old, covers the pipe and the terminal. The price is set somewhere else.
Russia now cancels a migrant’s work patent with nobody deciding to
Since 10 August the Russian interior ministry has run a service that automatically invalidates a foreign worker’s patent when the monthly tax advance goes unpaid.
Armenia’s parliament asks Azerbaijan to pay for the pylons
Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday night that Azerbaijan’s project to run power lines to Nakhchivan across Armenian territory is ready. Yerevan answered on Wednesday from the floor of the National Assembly, in two voices, and neither of them refused the line. The government said nothing.
Tashkent will name its compensation when Moscow finishes investigating
Eight Uzbek citizens killed at Nizhnekamsk on 10 August flew home on Wednesday aboard an Uzbek defence ministry aircraft, at state expense. Asked what their families will be paid, the migration agency in Tashkent said the figure will be known once the Russian investigation ends. Tatarstan started paying its own families the same day.
Mongolia raises rates half a point, and the pumps come off rations on Saturday
The Bank of Mongolia’s monetary policy committee met out of turn on Wednesday and lifted the policy rate to 12.5%, with the reserve requirement for banks going up by the same half point. Hours later the fuel emergency headquarters said the purchase cap and the odd-even plate rule at the pumps end on 15 August. By the end of the working day the bank’s own site still showed the old rate.
Kazakhstan’s oil route now rests on a phone call it was not part of
On 31 July, JD Vance asked Volodymyr Zelensky to stop striking the route Kazakhstan uses to sell most of its oil. Ukraine agreed not to target Caspian Pipeline Consortium infrastructure or non-Russian ships, and a US administration official has confirmed the warning. Last night’s attack on Novorossiysk, the heaviest of this crisis, was the first large test of that undertaking.
The arithmetic of gratitude
On 15 August Ulaanbaatar's drivers stop queuing by their plate numbers and start driving by them. Peter Lidovsky on a city that has scheduled its relief and its restriction for the same morning.
Afghanistan signs up to buy the gas it agreed to carry
Türkmengaz and Afghan Gas have signed a memorandum under which Afghanistan will purchase TAPI gas for its own needs. The transit country is becoming a customer, at a price not yet negotiated.
The corridor through Armenia acquires a second cargo
Ilham Aliyev says the project to run power lines to Nakhchivan across Armenian territory is ready, and that large electricity exports will follow. A route agreed as a road and a railway is being loaded, on one side's drawings, with a grid.