Search
The Black Sea drone war reaches Baku through the crew of a Turkish salvage tug
Two Azerbaijani sailors died on Wednesday when drones hit the tug Tedy twice off Odesa during a salvage operation for an Istanbul company, on a passage the Turkish trade press reports as bound for Constanța. On Thursday Russia's defence ministry reported a strike on “a tug escorting” two cargo ships bound for Odesa, Baku named its dead and told its citizens to keep away from war zones, and Ankara, which proposed a shipping-security mechanism 8 days ago, had added nothing to it by evening. The cost of the middle position in this war has moved from hulls to crews.
The port war now runs on both shores of the Black Sea
Russia says it struck cargo vessels and fuel storage at Ukraine's Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk ports on 25 August, extending a campaign against Ukrainian harbours it has run since mid-July. Across the water, Russia's own grain terminals at Novorossiysk are idle for a third week, and moving Kazakh oil through the same sea still costs nearly $400,000 a day.
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.
Tajikistan counts 17 dead on the Afghan border in six months
Tajikistan’s Anti-Drug Agency says Tajik forces fought 7 armed clashes with Afghan smugglers in the first half of 2026 and "neutralized" 17 Afghan citizens. In the same report, seizures fell 5% and drug crimes came in below last year’s count. The flow is shrinking on paper while the line gets deadlier, and that combination is the story.
Two wars close in on Kazakhstan’s flight map
Air Astana suspended flights to the United Arab Emirates on 12 July, turning one plane around in mid-air, after Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed and missiles reached the Gulf states. Days earlier a second Kazakh carrier dropped its route to Omsk over drone activity in Russia. Kazakhstan’s connectivity is being edited by two wars at once.
Who guards Tajikistan’s Afghan border while Russia is tied down in Ukraine
The Russia-led security bloc says the Tajik-Afghan frontier is its main problem in Central Asia, and it plans to send more help. Russia is stretched thin in Ukraine, and China, which has major assets to protect inside Tajikistan, has so far left the job to Moscow. That arrangement is starting to look fragile.