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Turkey pauses the straits, and Kazakh oil waits
From Thursday to Sunday, vessels bound for Novorossiysk could not get permits to transit the Turkish straits. The pause revealed a second gate on Kazakhstan’s main export route, and nobody in Astana holds the key.
Armenia brings the Russian import bans to the union's own table
Nikol Pashinyan told the four other governments of the Eurasian Economic Union on Friday that Russian restrictions on Armenian goods are feeding a negative view of the union inside Armenia. He came with figures: $319 million paid in during 2025, $175 million received back.
Fewer workers go to Russia, and the rubles they send buy less
Work-purpose entries to Russia from the region’s three biggest sending countries fell 15% in the first half of the year. From 1 September the workers who remain in Moscow will be registered through a phone app, and the ruble they are paid in has lost nearly 12% of its som value in five weeks.
July’s missing oil gets its first price tag
An energy commentator has put a dollar figure on Kazakhstan’s July production losses: more than $700 million of revenue in a single month. No official loss figure has surfaced, and the pipeline consortium has now said nothing in its own name for 8 days.
Chartering a tanker for the CPC terminal now costs $338,000 a day
The shipping market has repriced Kazakhstan's main export route. Daily charter rates for tankers calling at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal have reached about $338,000, war-risk cover for calls at Black Sea terminals has climbed to as much as 2% of a vessel's value, and August-loading CPC Blend was offered this week at nearly $4 a barrel below Brent.
Mongolia zeroes its fuel taxes at the border
With rationing in force in Ulaanbaatar and 11 days to COP17, the cabinet has cancelled the excise on petrol and diesel and cut customs duties on every petroleum product to zero, giving up a revenue line to lower the cost of every imported litre.
Rationing meets high season in Mongolia
Mongolia’s tour guides went public on Wednesday with what fuel rationing is costing the strongest tourist season in four years. The UN’s desertification summit opens in Ulaanbaatar in 12 days.
The first count of July arrives from an unnamed source
Kazakhstan pumped 14% less oil a day in July than in June, the first month-scale measure of what the tanker war costs. The figure comes from an industry source through Reuters. The consortium that runs the route has still published nothing under its own name.
Bishkek prices the day the caps lapse
Kyrgyzstan’s cabinet chairman Adylbek Kasymaliev said on Tuesday that diesel could reach 130 to 140 som a litre and petrol 110 to 120. The caps in force run to 30 September: 93.9 for diesel, 79.9 for AI-92. The head of government has now priced what comes after them.
Ankara puts two names on the shipping war
Turkey’s foreign ministry on Tuesday named two Turkish-owned ships hit in a single evening off Novorossiysk and told the warring parties to make the Black Sea safe for civilian navigation. Kazakhstan’s export recovery now depends on how much of that warning the tanker market believes.
Pashinyan calls the union paralyzed
Armenia’s prime minister said on Thursday the Eurasian Economic Union is “de facto paralyzed”, his hardest wording since Russia began closing its market to Armenian goods in May. The union’s core promise, free movement of goods, is now disputed in public by one of its five members.
The fuel wall arrives, and the region answers with signatures
From Saturday, Russia’s gasoline export ban covers every exporter, and for August the diesel ban reaches even the producers. The decree leaves one door open, intergovernmental agreements, and the region spent the week queueing at it.
Moscow writes the fuel wall into a decree, and adds diesel
Russia’s government published the decree on 30 July: the gasoline export ban now runs from 1 August to 31 January 2027 and covers all exporters, and for the month of August diesel and marine fuel join it. Exports under intergovernmental agreements and humanitarian aid stay exempt.
Ashgabat gives the EBRD five doors to knock on
EBRD president Odile Renaud-Basso signed a package of five memorandums in Ashgabat on 28 July, among them a 2027–2032 strategy framework with the Central Bank of Turkmenistan. President Serdar Berdimuhamedov received her the following day.
A $90 barrel reaches the region from both ends
Brent traded above $90 on 29 July, up more than 6% in a day, after a Houthi attack on a Saudi tanker and American-Saudi strikes in Iraq. Central Asia meets the rally shipping at a fraction of its June tempo and importing fuel at world prices.
The war on Russia’s warehouses arrives in Kazakhstan
Ukrainian drone strikes on Wildberries’ Russian warehouses have burned through the stock of Kazakh sellers who trade on the platform, and they are pushing Wildberries and Ozon to move warehousing south into Kazakhstan. The first move costs Kazakh small traders real money now; the second offers Kazakhstan a larger logistics business, though not a cheap one.
The corridor and the war now share one sea
Peskov called the strikes in the Caspian extremely dangerous on Monday. In the same days, the first cargo to move under electronic TIR across three countries crossed that water from Baku to Turkmenbashi.
Russia puts a price on the migrant family
The law Putin signed on 26 July ties the right to work to an income test measured per dependant, and charges a fixed monthly tax for each of them. Most of it starts on 1 January 2027.
The war reaches the Caspian
Iran says a Ukrainian strike killed a sailor on one of its commercial ships in the Caspian. The detour Kazakhstan is counting on runs across that same sea.
Kazakhstan takes the tanker attacks to the SCO table
Foreign minister Yermek Kosherbayev told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s ministerial council on Friday that attacks on oil infrastructure threaten the durability of trade relations and supply chains. Astana has carried this month’s crisis onto a multilateral platform, into a room that includes Russia, China, India, Iran and Pakistan.