Politics
Power and governance
Mongolia’s budget revision goes back to committee as the ruling party sets 20 October
Mongolia’s parliament sent the third reading of the 2026 budget revision back to its Budget Standing Committee on Monday, by 68.6% of the members present, to revisit two rejected proposals: a higher care allowance for citizens with disabilities and the education ministry’s lease payments. The ruling party’s faction chair Zh. Batjargal said it must pass by 20 October, ahead of the pension and pay rises due on 1 November.
Avaza’s week has a Caspian summit in one portal post and none in the programme
Turkmenistan’s state portal, turkmenistan.gov.tm, gives two accounts of the 3 days that open in Avaza on Wednesday. Its programme has the Caspian ministers on 7 October, the heads of state of Central Asia and Azerbaijan on 8 October and the CIS council on 9 October. Its post on Tokayev’s attendance adds a Caspian Ecological Summit, dated 9 October by an Ashgabat outlet that expects Putin and Pezeshkian.
Four German party foundations stop work in Georgia after Tbilisi rejects their grants
The Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Naumann foundations closed their Tbilisi offices on 30 September after the government rejected on 28 July the grant applications the Law on Grants obliges them to file, and the Heinrich Böll and Friedrich Ebert foundations have followed, JAMnews reported on 2 and 3 October. Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said foreign political parties and their foundations “have no political mission to carry out in Georgia”.
Uzbekistan folds two ministries into one for education and science
A decree of 3 October merges the Ministry of Preschool and School Education and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation into a Ministry of Education and Science, and gives the Cabinet a week to organise it. That evening economic adviser Obid Khakimov became deputy head of the presidential administration for education reform, and on Sunday businessman Zafar Khashimov was named to lead a working group on it.
Aliyev puts 9 billion manat on defence and tells his party Azerbaijan joins no camp
At the eighth congress of his New Azerbaijan Party on Friday, President Ilham Aliyev said the 2027 budget sets aside about 9 billion manat, $5.2 billion by Trend’s conversion, for military and security spending, that currency reserves have reached $90 billion, about 20 times the external debt, and that Azerbaijan “does not join any camp and will not”. The speech is a doctrine with a price list attached.
Mongolia’s Democrats demand a confidence vote on Uchral as the Khural debates the budget
The Democratic Party’s political council asked on Friday that Prime Minister Uchral put a question of confidence to the Khural, party leader Tsogtgerel said, after its first demand, the dismissal of defence minister Batlut, went unanswered. The parliament sat the same day on the 2026 budget rewrite, with votes set for 17:00, and the industry minister said 78,000 tonnes of petrol are contracted from Russia for October.
The UK sanctions 4 Georgians for Kremlin disinformation and names Tskhinvali’s leaders
Britain’s package of 1 October lists 23 individuals and entities and 8 ships. Among them are 7 people “involved in spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation”, 4 of them Georgian nationals, and the serving and former heads of the Russian-installed authority in South Ossetia. The same evening a few dozen people rallied in Tbilisi’s Rike Park for Mikheil Saakashvili’s release, against the interior ministry’s refusal.
The Kremlin thanks Tokayev for his words on Putin as he flies on from Berlin to Munich
Russia values and is grateful for the assessment Kassym-Jomart Tokayev gave of Vladimir Putin in Berlin, Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, and the two presidents’ close, constructive and trusting relations let them discuss the hardest questions of the international agenda, Ukraine included. Tokayev arrived in Munich on Wednesday afternoon for talks with Bavaria’s government and Landtag and a Kazakh-Bavarian technology forum, Kazinform reported at 14:45 Astana time.
Takaichi and Uchral: 35 minutes, an exchange of notes on the airport loan and a JETRO office
Takaichi Sanae received Nyam-Osor Uchral on Tuesday at 17:45 for 35 minutes and a working dinner, Tokyo’s foreign ministry said. The two welcomed the exchange of notes on the yen loan for the Chinggis Khaan airport expansion, agreed to open a JETRO office in Mongolia and to start talks on a tax convention, and Japan backed Mongolia’s bid for a Security Council seat in 2047.
PACE calls Armenia’s June vote a real choice made under Russian pressure of a new scale
Observers of the Council of Europe’s assembly, led by Damien Cottier of Switzerland, found that the 7 June election gave voters a real choice in a well-run process, under Russian interference on a scale their report says no member state has seen before, Armenian media reported on Monday as the assembly sat in Strasbourg. That plenary also elected Hayk Konjoryan, a vice-speaker of Armenia’s parliament, one of the assembly’s vice-presidents.
No political prisoner among Turkmenistan’s 1,054 pardoned, Turkmen.news reports
The list of 1,054 convicts pardoned for the 35th anniversary of independence contains no political prisoner and no member of the Baluch minority, Turkmen.news reported on Monday, citing its sources in the security agencies. The decree, which the outlet and Khronika Turkmenistana both date to Friday 25 September, is the first to free more than a thousand people at once since the anniversary pardon of 2023.
Tajikistan asks for its first UN Security Council seat, for 2028 to 2029
Foreign minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin told the General Assembly on Saturday that Tajikistan has put its name forward as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for 2028 to 2029, the first candidacy in its history, Asia-Plus reported on Monday afternoon. The vote comes in June 2027, when Kyrgyzstan will be six months into the first Central Asian seat since Kazakhstan’s in 2017 to 2018.
Baku sees a territorial claim in a Georgian church statement, and Tbilisi sees no tension
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry told the Georgian Patriarchate on Friday that its statement on the church of St George at Kurmukhi, in Gakh district, contained territorial claims and advised it against following the Armenian Church’s example. By Saturday prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze had said there was no tension with Baku, and on Monday an EU-affairs analyst in Tbilisi said everyone had made mistakes.
Turkmenistan pardons 1,054 prisoners for its 35th anniversary and names none of them
Serdar Berdimuhamedov signed the pardon decree at an enlarged sitting of the Cabinet and the State Security Council on Friday, two days after a Halk Maslahaty that had passed without one. The number sits between the 736 pardoned before the 2024 anniversary and the 1,180 of 2023, by the counts Turkmenportal and Fergana reported in those years.
Turkmenistan shuts its airspace to Iranian airlines, Tehran’s aviation authority says: the Dushanbe flights now go round through Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
A Varesh Airlines flight from Tehran to Dushanbe turned back on Thursday after 1 hour and 8 minutes in the air when Turkmenistan refused it passage through its airspace, the airline’s Dushanbe office told Asia-Plus, which published the account at 09:21 on Friday; the aircraft returned to Imam Khomeini airport and later flew the route through the airspace of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the Mashhad to Dushanbe service will take the same way round. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said on Thursday that Turkmenistan had refused Iranian airlines transit permits, its spokesman Majid Akhavan quoted by Iran International and relayed by News.az at 15:26; the airline tied the refusal to the sanctions on Iran the United States announced recently. No statement from Ashgabat had appeared on the state portal or on TDH by Friday morning.
Three Caucasus capitals sell one corridor at the UN in a day: Kobakhidze’s $7 billion to 2032, Pashinyan’s 26% rising to 49%, and Bayramov’s direct dialogue with Mirzoyan
Irakli Kobakhidze told the UN General Assembly on Thursday that Georgia will put $7 billion into its transit infrastructure by 2032, the railway’s modernisation, new highways, the Anaklia deep-water port, a new international airport for Tbilisi and a fibre-optic cable under the Black Sea, and that Georgia “reaffirms its readiness to maintain dialogue with all international partners willing to work with us on the basis of mutual respect and sovereign equality”; the words European Union did not occur in the speech, Novosti Gruzii noted on Friday morning, and 20% of the country “remains under the occupation of the Russian Federation”. The same day Nikol Pashinyan told the hall that Armenia “will initially have a 26 percent stake in the TRIPP Development Company” and that “in the 50th year, the Republic of Armenia’s share will become 49 percent”, Armenpress reported at 05:24 on Friday, and on the margins Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan reviewed the progress since the Washington summit and “agreed to continue direct dialogue”, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry said through Report.az at 08:16.
Tokayev will dissolve every maslikhat in Kazakhstan, and the councils that Amanat filled in 2023 go back to the polls on a date the election commission has yet to name
President Tokayev told the second day of the People’s Council’s first session on Thursday that the closing stage of the reforms will be elections to the maslikhats at every level: he will consult the prime minister and the Kurultai’s chairman shortly on ending the councils’ powers early, sign a decree, and leave the date to the Central Election Commission, Zakon.kz reported at 12:31. His reason is the party map. The great majority of maslikhat deputies were elected from Amanat, he said, and that party no longer acts on its own, having joined Adilet, so the question of the legitimacy of the greater part of the maslikhats’ deputy corps would arise.
Kyrgyzstan’s parliament sets the presidential election for 27 January 2027 by 86 votes to none, and its prime minister spends the week in Hangzhou with Li Qiang and a trade expo
The Jogorku Kenesh confirmed on Thursday morning that the presidential election will be held on 27 January 2027, by a resolution that 86 deputies voted for and none against, Kabar reported; the law fixes the regular election on the fourth Wednesday of January of the year in which the president’s term expires, and leaves the parliament the confirmation. Speaker Marlen Mamataliyev told the chamber a Wednesday vote is meant to lift turnout and cut vote-buying. On Wednesday the cabinet’s chairman, Adylbek Kasymaliev, was in Hangzhou, where Premier Li Qiang received him on the eve of the Global Digital Trade Expo and named the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway and “the modernization of ports” as the projects to advance, Xinhua reported.
Kazakhstan’s People’s Council elects Yerlan Koshanov its chairman by 120 votes to 1, and the week’s seating of the second republic is complete
The Qazaqstan Halyq Kenesi elected Yerlan Koshanov, the last chairman of the abolished Mazhilis, as its chairman at its first session in Astana on Wednesday: 121 ballots came out of the urn, none of them spoiled, 120 for him and 1 abstention, Kazinform reported at 15:02. President Tokayev had proposed him at the session’s opening as “a responsible, qualified and experienced statesman” for a post that “should be held by a person known in the country, able to become the link between the people and the power”, and told the members that “a special responsibility rests on each member of the Halyq Kenesi”. In 5 days the second republic has re-seated the heads of its court, election commission and audit chamber, named a full constitutional bench with the Kurultai’s consent, and given its consultative chamber a chairman who ran the presidential administration from September 2019 to February 2022.
Mongolia’s new justice minister declares 3 apartments worth 2.2 billion tugrik and shares in at least 6 companies, the anti-corruption agency’s register shows
G. Temuulen, sworn in as justice and home affairs minister on Tuesday, holds 3 apartments with a combined declared value of 2.2 billion tugrik and shares in at least 6 companies, gogo.mn reported from the Anti-Corruption Agency’s declaration register in the first hour of Wednesday, naming TTEM, Euroconstruction, Harte Gold Corp, Khanburgedei, Yarlag and Taobao Mongol among them. Dorgio.mn’s reading of the same register when the ruling party nominated him on 17 September lists the first 5 with Chemostemics as the sixth, and adds vehicles at 1.2 billion tugrik, livestock at 523 million, deposits of 94 million, loans of 303 million, his own annual income of 75 million and his family’s of 134 million.