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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.
Inflation reaches 13% in the country that counts petrol by the litre
Mongolia's July consumer prices rose 13.0% year on year, and the central bank called its monetary policy committee into an extraordinary session for Wednesday afternoon. The fuel ledger, meanwhile, is declared full for August, on Ulaanbaatar's arithmetic alone.
The injured are recounted before the dead can fly home
Uzbekistan's working group reached Nizhnekamsk on Tuesday evening. The special flight it came to organise still has no date, and the official counts of the wounded moved twice in a day.
Nine hours over Novorossiysk, and the tanker due Thursday stays dark
Russia's largest Black Sea port spent the night of 11-12 August under a combined drone attack that ran past nine hours. The crude tanker due at the CPC terminal on Thursday morning has meanwhile been silent on AIS for more than 40 hours.
Russia's first answer on the Black Sea moratorium comes from a Duma deputy
Turkey's proposal for a moratorium on maritime strikes drew its first Russian pushback on Tuesday, at parliamentary level.
Kazakhstan sets its state chatbot a target of 150 services
The Tuesday cabinet in Astana spent its session on digital government and came out with dates. eGov GPT goes from 50 services to 150 by the end of the year, every public service centre becomes an artificial intelligence office by December, and the action plan for the whole programme is due within a week.
Mongolia's ministry publishes the Moscow promise, and Russia says nothing
The claim that Russia will send Mongolia an extra 25,000 tonnes of petrol this month moved on Tuesday from a minister's social account to his ministry's own website. No Russian institution has confirmed it.
Moscow answers Armenia's trade complaint with a calendar
Nikol Pashinyan named the Russian import restrictions at the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council on Friday. Russia replied on Tuesday. The reply came from the foreign ministry, and it carried three dates.
Uzbekistan's answer to eight dead workers is a special flight
Tashkent's response to the deaths of eight of its citizens at Nizhnekamsk arrived on Tuesday as logistics. A working group flew to Kazan, the emergencies ministry said the bodies would come home on a special flight, and no Uzbek government text named who fired the drones.
The shipping war’s damaged ships head for the yards
Two of the vessels hit off Novorossiysk this month now have names and destinations: the container ship LDR Yasar is under damage assessment in Samsun, and the dry cargo carrier Gulluk is sailing to Istanbul for repairs.
Rosatom signs for 100 megawatts of Kyrgyz wind
Rosatom’s wind arm, the Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund and the Eurasian Development Bank have signed for a 100 MW wind farm at Kok-Moinok in the Issyk-Kul region. The signature is five days old; the full public record of it assembled only this week.