All News
Every published article, newest first.
Armenia's former tax chief is carried into court on a stretcher
Gagik Khachatryan, who ran the State Revenue Committee and then the finance ministry under Serzh Sargsyan, was taken from his home by Investigative Committee officers on Tuesday and delivered to court lying down. The detention is the milestone the new case opened on 29 August had been pointing to.
KazMunayGas settles its yuan bond today at less than half the coupon of the dollars it is buying back
Wednesday is the day the two money tracks touch: 3.5 billion yuan of new bonds settle at 2.3% and 2.8%, and the early deadline for tendering the company's 5.375% dollar notes closes at 17:00 New York time. The gap between the two coupons is the price Kazakhstan's oil company now puts on borrowing in Beijing's currency.
Pashinyan drops the referendum, and Putin offers to leave Gyumri
Four days after Lavrov told Armenia to choose between the EU and the EAEU by referendum, Pashinyan told Putin in Bishkek there will be no referendum and no membership decision yet. Putin answered at his press conference in Bishkek that the Gyumri base stays only if Armenians want it, and invited Pashinyan to Moscow to go through the file point by point. The ultimatum has become a negotiation with a venue.
Turkmenistan's exchange bulletin returns with a $7.3 million week
The state commodity exchange published a weekly trade report for the last week of August: 8 transactions, just over $7.27 million in foreign-currency sales and 8.2 million manat in domestic deals. Buyers came from the UAE, Turkey and Afghanistan.
A pardoned Russian's ticket out of Georgia expires in a migration cell
Denis Kulanin, released from a protest-case sentence by presidential pardon on 28 August, spent 1 September in Tbilisi's temporary migrant detention center while a ticket to Yerevan bought for him went unused. The migration service wants a court-ordered deportation, and voluntary exit is blocked until a judge rules.
Dushanbe and Yerevan agree to convene their economic commission
Rahmon and Pashinyan used the SCO sidelines in Bishkek to line up the next session of the Tajik-Armenian intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation, with business forums to follow. No documents were signed.
Armenia opens a new case against the man who ran its taxes and treasury
The Investigative Committee announced a new criminal case against Gagik Khachatryan, a former finance minister and former head of the State Revenue Committee, and said he would be detained. Prosecutors want 210 properties, stakes in 29 companies and 33 billion drams, about $85 million, forfeited.
Uzbekistan's new fighters are Chinese, and the footage is the announcement
State television's independence-anniversary film showed at least 6 J-10CE jets in Uzbek insignia at the Karshi-Khanabad air base. That makes Uzbekistan the second foreign operator of the type after Pakistan and the first Central Asian operator of a modern Chinese fighter; neither government has published a contract.
The SCO leaves Bishkek with 28 documents and two new centers
The 25th anniversary summit closed on 1 September with 28 signed texts, the Bishkek Declaration at the top: charter amendments that add two new bodies to the organization's structure, a roadmap for settling more trade in national currencies, and sectoral programs running to 2030.
Tashkent and Beijing set a $30 billion target
Mirziyoyev and Xi met in Bishkek on Monday and agreed to lift bilateral trade from about $18 billion to $30 billion, by the Uzbek president's press service.
Xi promises Mongolia fuel as its August petrol book closes 8.4% short
Xi Jinping affirmed in Bishkek that China will keep supplying Mongolia with petroleum products through the market's instability. At home, the prime minister's task force closed August with petrol arrivals 8.4% short of orders, and diesel delivered in full.
Dushanbe's fuel ask of Iran is mostly crude
Emomali Rahmon and Masoud Pezeshkian met on the summit's margins in Bishkek on Monday, with a request on the table that Dushanbe sized in August: 2.55 million tonnes of Iranian oil a year, most of it unrefined.
Charter amendments top the SCO's anniversary pile in Bishkek
The organisation's heads of state met in Bishkek today over a Bishkek Declaration and more than 20 documents, charter amendments among them. The final texts were still unpublished as this edition went to print.
Russia keeps the diesel door shut, and the region's workarounds become the plan
The exemption that was to reopen Russia's diesel exports for producing refineries on 1 September was pushed back a month, 3 days before it started. The ban now runs to 30 September, and the region's importers know their main supplier's calendar is written one month at a time.
Mongolia's fuel queues thin out, by the ministry's own count
The industry ministry counted 58 cars per station on 31 August against 70 to 75 a week earlier, and credited the taskforce running the crisis. The tonnage ledger that would prove a turn is kept separately, and its August petrol line ran a third short at the last public accounting.
Xi's Bishkek package holds a treaty, a bridge and no fuel line
Xi Jinping and Sadyr Japarov signed a treaty of perpetual good-neighbourliness, friendship and cooperation on 31 August, with a joint declaration and, by economist.kg's count, 28 sectoral documents behind it. The lists published by evening carry a bridge, a rail memorandum and a berry protocol, and nothing on fuel, the one commodity Kyrgyzstan now prices by decree.
Aliyev and Pashinyan pace out the Trump route in Bishkek
Azerbaijan's president and Armenia's prime minister met on the margins of the SCO summit on 31 August and discussed what both readouts call further practical steps on the TRIPP corridor. For one afternoon the normalisation track between Baku and Yerevan ran through Kyrgyzstan.
Kazakhstan fills both posts in a morning, and the ten-day clock starts
The Kurultai approved Yerlan Karin as vice-president and Olzhas Bektenov as prime minister on 31 August, and Tokayev signed both appointment decrees within hours. The resignation Bektenov handed in on Friday lasted 3 days. The message is continuity; the new fact is the seat built beside the presidency.
The rule leaves, the money stays
COP17 closed with $1.3 billion in restoration and drought finance and no drought framework. The instrument fight moves to Egypt in 2028, and Central Asia spends the pause competing for discretionary money it helped argue into existence.
Ashgabat takes a new Turkish ambassador's letters
Serdar Berdymukhamedov received Sener Cebeci's credentials on Friday; the readout speaks of fraternal relations of a long-term, strategic nature.