A ₮3.5 billion line for a school tied to the family of Mongolia's prime minister surfaces in the budget rewrite, and the ministry has not published the list
A member of the State Great Khural says the government's amendment to the 2026 budget carries 3.5 billion tugrik ($970,000) for the Ikh Zasag King school, which prime minister Nyam-Osoryn Uchral himself calls the school connected to his family. The prime minister says the school asked for nothing, the finance minister says nothing was allocated to it, and the education ministry has yet to publish which schools share the 18 billion tugrik line the sum sits in.
Baku moves the start of work on the Trump route to 2027, 6 days before Armenia's court takes up the deal
Physical work on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the road and rail link across Armenia's south between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan agreed in Washington in August 2025, will begin in 2027 instead of before the end of this year, Azerbaijan's foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov told journalists on Wednesday, “according to the latest information”. Ilham Aliyev had put the start at the end of this year or the start of next; Nikol Pashinyan had wanted it in 2026. Armenia's Constitutional Court examines the agreement on 15 September.
Kyrgyzstan's parliament confirms Malik Bekturganov as prosecutor general a day before the appeal verdict on Tashiev
The Jogorku Kenesh approved Malik Bekturganov as prosecutor general on Wednesday morning, 24.kg reported at 10:53 Bishkek time. He has run the office as acting prosecutor general since June and was its first deputy from June 2024. On Thursday the Bishkek City Court is expected to rule on the appeals in the «letter 75» case, where his office is asking 9 years with confiscation for Kamchybek Tashiev and seven others.
The Kremlin books Pashinyan for Moscow, and puts the referendum he dropped back on the agenda
Vladimir Putin invited Nikol Pashinyan to Moscow and Pashinyan accepted, Dmitry Peskov said on Monday; the two leaders, in his words, will discuss "the choice of the direction of development, Armenia's orientation" and "the holding of the corresponding referendum". A week earlier in Bishkek the Armenian prime minister had taken that referendum off his table. Moscow has now put it on its own, with no date attached.
Armenia sends the Catholicos back to Armavir, where he is charged with defying one court order
The Court of Cassation has ruled that the criminal case against Garegin II and six bishops belongs to the court of first instance of Armavir province, because the acts charged were committed at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Armenpress reported at 19:45 on Monday. The charge is a single article: part 2 of article 507 of the criminal code, obstructing the enforcement of a judicial act in force through the use of official powers. Behind it stands one bishop, Gevorg Saroyan, whom the Catholicos defrocked in January while a court order kept him in his post.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Khachatryan gets 2 months in the jail that already holds Kocharyan
A Yerevan court ordered Gagik Khachatryan, the former finance minister and tax chief, held for 2 months, Sputnik Armenia and Kommersant reported on Wednesday morning. He goes to the Yerevan-Kentron detention centre, where Robert Kocharyan has been since last week, and the Human Rights Defender has opened an inquiry over a video of him that circulated online.
Kazakhstan brings Tleuberdi back from Vienna to run its foreign ministry
Mukhtar Tleuberdi, foreign minister from 2019 to 2023 and ambassador in Vienna since then, was appointed foreign minister again by decree on Wednesday. His is the first ministerial name of the government whose prime minister the Kurultai approved on Monday, on day 3 of the 10 days the law allows.
Tbilisi asks a court to send its pardoned Russian back to Russia
The Migration Department filed a petition with Tbilisi City Court on Tuesday to expel Denis Kulanin to Russia, 2 days after the same court allowed him to leave for a third country. He is still in the migration centre with a ticket to Yerevan he cannot use.
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.
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.
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.