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The pardoned Russian left Georgia for Yerevan the same evening the court gave him 7 days
Denis Kulanin flew out of Tbilisi on Friday evening and landed at Zvartnots, 8 days after President Mikheil Kavelashvili's pardon and hours after Tbilisi City Court granted the migration department's expulsion motion in a form that let him pick the country. The exit closes a thread that ran from a pardon through a dry hunger strike and a migration-centre cell to a courtroom, and it closes in Armenia, the destination on the ticket that expired while he sat in the centre on 1 September.
Kazakhstan's vice-president gets a decree of his own, and the Presidential Administration keeps the staff
On Saturday Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed decree No. 1452 “On the powers of the Vice-President of the Republic of Kazakhstan”, the decree that says what Yerlan Karin does in the office he took on 31 August. It gives the vice-president strategic initiatives to draft, seven commissions and councils to run, the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions to head and the KISI think tank to supervise. Everything outward, from the Kurultai to a foreign summit, he does “on the instruction of the President”, and his support comes from the Presidential Administration, where he served as first deputy head until his appointment.
Mongolia's parliament opens a budget rewrite that turns a 57% export jump into pensions and pay rises
The State Great Khural opened its extraordinary session at 10:02 on Monday with 64.3% of its members in the hall and one package before it: the amendment to the 2026 budget that the government submitted on 20 August. In the parliament's own summary the case is four numbers. The economy grew 7.6% over seven months, exports reached $12 billion, up 57%, and the government wants ₮250,000 ($70) a month more for 435,000 pensioners and 20 to 50% more for 149,000 state employees. Both increases are permanent. Both begin in the year's last two months, and the full bill arrives in 2027, the year the government's own draft budget suspends the spending cap.
Russian exchange diesel falls 8.8% in the week its producers were locked in
Summer diesel on the St Petersburg exchange ended Friday at 68,610 roubles a tonne, 8.76% below the previous Friday by the national index Interfax publishes, after the government kept producers' exports shut to 30 September. AI-92 fell 4.38% on Thursday to 68,945 and ended the week at 68,805. At the central bank's rate that is $792 a tonne, $168 under the $960 reference Kyrgyzstan's subsidy is written against, and diesel at $790 sits $260 under its $1,050 line.
A Tbilisi court gives the pardoned Russian 7 days to leave Georgia for a country of his choosing
Tbilisi City Court has granted the migration department's motion on Denis Kulanin in full, and the motion carried its own exit: seven days to leave voluntarily, to any country he picks, with a handover to Russia off the table, as Sova and Meduza read the ruling. The order had not reached the migration service by Friday afternoon, his lawyer said, and he stays in its temporary placement centre until it does.
A day after Tashkent's utilities cleared their own pipes, the city names a leaking gas main
Gas from a 219-millimetre underground main collected in a heating-network chamber under Glinka Street and blew out the asphalt on Thursday, Tashkent's city administration said on Friday. On Thursday the capital's heat, water and gas suppliers had all said the blast had nothing to do with their networks.
Kazakhstan's central bank forecasts at $89 oil, and names next year's fiscal stimulus as the limit on its cuts
The National Bank cut its base rate to 16.25% on Friday and told the market why the room below it is limited: next year's budget will spend more, and the extra comes from the National Fund. The bank's own forecast runs on $89 oil this year. The budget law now in force was written at $60.
31 December, in dollars
Bishkek fixed its fuel wall at $960 a tonne of petrol until New Year's Eve and backdated it to August. In the first month behind it, petrol rose anyway. The resolution says one thing, the statistics another, and one document would settle the difference.
Tbilisi's file on a dead Abkhaz activist holds three detainees and two theories
Daur Buava, 30, who left Tkvarcheli for Tbilisi in 2021 and made TikTok videos about Abkhazia joining Georgia, was found dead in a rented flat in Didi Digomi on 27 August. A week on, the Interior Ministry's file holds three detainees and two articles of the criminal code, the drugs version the ministry gave on 29 August is disputed by his lawyer, and Wednesday's protest in Tbilisi carried the line “Daur was killed”.
Astana breaks its silence on the Uzbek scholar, and says Tashkent has been told
Kazakhstan's National Security Committee gave its first public word on the case of Ikboljon Qoraboyev on Thursday, in reply to a Tengrinews request: the pre-trial file is closed to disclosure under article 201 of the criminal procedure code, and “the Uzbek side has been officially notified through diplomatic channels”. Two months into the detention, it is the first confirmation from either government that the case exists.
Erdogan's Black Sea shipping mechanism would start at the berth where Kazakh oil loads
Flying home from Bishkek on Wednesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the reporters on his plane that the Black Sea needs “a mechanism that will permanently secure the safety of commercial shipping”, and that Turkey's concern covers “all civilian sea transport”, beyond ships under its own flag or management. He named no design in the remarks Haber7 printed. The ships with the most to gain are the tankers that load Kazakhstan's oil at Novorossiysk, where the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's terminal logged three attacks in July.
Kazakhstan's central bank decides with its first sub-10% print and Brent 58% above the budget's price
The National Bank of Kazakhstan announces its base-rate decision at 12:00 Astana time on Friday with August inflation at 9.8%, the first reading under 10% since the bank began cutting in June, and Brent at $95. The budget the bank is asked to protect was written at $60 a barrel and 540 tenge to the dollar; the market has delivered $95 and 456.
Dushanbe asks the EBRD to design its solar auctions, single buyer included
The EBRD has taken on the design of competitive auctions for solar power in Tajikistan, two projects of about 200 MW each, at the request of the energy ministry. The bank's project page, disclosed on 5 August and reported in Dushanbe on Wednesday, pairs the auctions with advice on "a new market operator/single buyer entity".
KazMunayGas takes $500 million of the $658 million its dollar bondholders offered
Holders of KazMunayGas's 5.375% notes due 2030 tendered $658.1 million by the early deadline of 2 September, the company said on Thursday. It will buy $500 million of them, the cap it set in August, at a proration factor of 73.1%, and settle on 4 September.
Uzbekistan's governors get 3.2 trillion soums to lend after 17% of last year's new firms close
Shavkat Mirziyoyev told a meeting on poverty on Thursday that 15,000 of the 86,000 small enterprises created in the regions over the past year have already stopped work, and that about 62,000 citizens are struggling to repay the bank loans that started their businesses. His answer puts the lending decision in headquarters run by the hokims, the regional and district governors.
Russian crude reaches Kyrgyzstan by Kazakh pipeline for the first time: 35,000 tonnes in August
KazTransOil says it carried its first transit oil to Kyrgyzstan in August: 35,000 tonnes moved through its trunk pipelines to the Shagyr loading point and on by rail. Reuters names the origin as Russia. The route matters because Moscow's export bans cover petrol and diesel, and crude is the good that still travels.
Tokayev completes his cabinet on day 4 of 10, and changes 3 of its 24 names
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the decrees that fill Kazakhstan's government on Thursday, 4 days into the 10 that the law on government gives a new prime minister. Of the 24 posts under Olzhas Bektenov, 21 keep the people who held them before the August election; the foreign, culture and emergencies ministries change hands.
The summit nobody counted the same way
A peak that lost a name to gain one, guests numbered 17, 18 or 21, documents 28 or 29, and a chamber that approved a government without saying by how many votes. In the region's week of ceremonies, numbers appeared where they flattered and vanished where they would bind.
Azeri Light clears $97, half again the oil price written into Baku's budget
Azerbaijan's export blend was priced at $97.61 a barrel on Wednesday morning, up $4.72 or 5.08% on the day, APA reported; the 2026 state budget was drawn at $65.
The OPEC Fund lends Dushanbe $30 million for 82 km of the road to China
The Vienna-based fund will finance the first stage of the Rushan to Varzesh reconstruction in Gorno-Badakhshan, 82.2 of 235 km on the corridor that runs from Dushanbe through Kulma to the Chinese border, Asia-Plus reported on Wednesday.