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Air Belgium will fly cargo through Ashgabat, and Turkmenistan dreams of a hub
Air Belgium plans to start cargo flights through Ashgabat in early August, the Turkmen embassy in Brussels said. For one of the world’s most closed countries, the freighter is a small bet on becoming an air-cargo bridge between Europe and Asia.
Russia asks Kazakhstan for petrol, and the supplier becomes the supplicant
Russia is in talks to buy about 50,000 tonnes of petrol from Kazakhstan as Ukrainian strikes knock out its refineries one by one. For years Russia was the region’s fuel backstop. That assumption is now running in reverse, and it is reshaping how Astana thinks about its own supply.
Kazakhstan signs into America’s AI bloc, the same week it was China’s guest of honour
Kazakhstan joined Pax Silica, the US-led coalition to build AI supply chains outside China, signing the accession in Washington on 27 June. It is the first Central Asian state to join. The signature is days old, and it lands in the same week Kazakhstan was guest of honour at China’s Eurasia expo and agreed to route its disaster data through Xinjiang.
At China’s Eurasia expo, Kazakhstan is guest of honour and the trade runs one way
Kazakhstan was the guest of honour last week at the China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi, where Astana and Beijing set a target of $100 billion in annual trade. China’s trade with Central Asia passed $100 billion for the first time in 2025. The flows, and the advantage, point mostly one way.
China gives Central Asia eyes in the sky for its disasters. The data lands in Xinjiang
China and three Central Asian states agreed last week to build a shared constellation of satellites to watch for earthquakes, landslides and the floods that come off melting glaciers. The region needs the warning. The satellites’ data will be processed at a computing centre in Xinjiang.
Tajikistan’s workforce will add two million by 2040. The jobs are the missing half
Tajikistan’s working-age population will grow by more than 2 million by 2040, official projections say. Whether that becomes an engine or a pressure depends on a number the country has struggled to move: jobs created at home.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan put their border crossings on a 24-hour clock
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are moving border checkpoints to round-the-clock operation, qazinform reported on 26 June. It is a small administrative change with a real effect on trade: a border open all night moves more goods than one that closes at five.
Hormuz shut again, and the southern route Kazakhstan is building sits behind the chokepoint
A cargo ship was hit off Oman on 25 June, the UN paused its evacuation of 11,000 stranded sailors, and Iran told vessels to use only its approved lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. For Central Asia the reminder is sharp: the wartime oil premium can return overnight, and the southern trade route Kazakhstan is betting on passes through the strait that keeps closing.
Kazakhstan wants to host Central Asia’s AI. The bottleneck is electricity
A Nasdaq-listed firm has floated a 1 gigawatt AI data centre in Kazakhstan, one of several AI projects Astana is courting in its self-declared Year of Artificial Intelligence. A gigawatt is a large power station. Kazakhstan already struggles to keep the power it has.
At Summer Davos, China shifts from selling to Kazakhstan to building inside it
Kazakhstan’s prime minister spent Summer Davos working a line of Chinese firms, from carmakers to battery giants. The thread running through the meetings is localisation: China moving from exporting goods to Kazakhstan toward manufacturing them there.
A gas superpower cannot keep the lights on in Mary, so it fired the officials
Turkmenistan holds some of the world’s largest gas reserves. In its Mary Region this month the power went out almost daily in 40-degree heat, a rare street protest followed, and the state’s answer was to dismiss local officials. The lights are still flickering.
Before the reactors, the wires: Central Asia loses up to a fifth of its power in aging grids
While Astana and Tashkent pour concrete for nuclear plants, the EDB used its Almaty meeting to point at the cheaper problem underneath: aging generation and grids that lose as much as 20% of the electricity they carry.
A Russia-anchored development bank is widening its map. Oman is joining, Mongolia is in talks
At its annual meeting in Almaty, the Eurasian Development Bank said Oman will join this year and Mongolia is in negotiations, with its portfolio now around $22 billion. A bank built by Moscow and Astana is collecting members well beyond the post-Soviet space, at a moment when one of its founders is under sanctions.
Central Asia moves to pool its disaster data as the mudflows multiply
A regional dialogue in Bishkek this week is pushing for a shared online catalogue of climate disasters. The need is in the count: Kyrgyzstan has logged more than 240 mudflows already in 2026, against 133 in all of 2024.
Central Asia is going nuclear on Russian reactors and Russian credit
Uzbekistan has poured the first concrete for its nuclear plant. Kazakhstan has signed a $16.5 billion deal for its own. Both will be built by Rosatom, financed largely by Moscow, and fuelled on Russian terms. The region that talks about loosening its dependence on Russia is pouring four decades of it into the ground.
The IMF likes Uzbekistan’s numbers and still flags the risks
Uzbekistan grew 7.7% in 2025 and brought inflation down, the IMF said this week. The praise came with the usual instruction: keep policy tight, because the easy part of the cycle is ending.
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Kazakhstan barely notices remittances. For two of its neighbours, they are the economy
New figures show Kazakhstan sent about $376 million abroad in the first four months of 2026 and took in far less. Money wired home by migrants barely registers in its economy. Two doors down, in Dushanbe and Bishkek, the same flow is most of the household budget. One region, two opposite economies.
As SCO chair, Kyrgyzstan is building the bloc’s money machine in Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan opened an SCO project-support centre in Bishkek on 24 June, one more piece of the financial architecture it is assembling during its turn chairing the bloc. The summit in August is the deadline. A development bank is the prize.
The Netherlands tops Kazakhstan’s investor table at $125 billion. The figure is mostly a mailing address
Kazakhstan said this week that Dutch investment has passed $125 billion, keeping the Netherlands its largest foreign investor. The same week in Brussels, Tokayev cited $210 billion of European money. Both numbers count a great deal of capital that only stops in Europe on its way through.
Kyrgyzstan gains two villages from Uzbekistan, and a road that cuts 200 kilometers off the trip
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan swapped border land this week: two villages of about 2,500 people moved to Kyrgyzstan, equal plots went back, and 236 hectares changed hands for a road that cuts one regional journey from 255 kilometers to 55. Bishkek has already proposed the same kind of swap to Kazakhstan.