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Dushanbe borrows 200 million dollars to keep paying salaries
The Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development signed a budget support loan with Tajikistan on Thursday at one per cent over twenty years. The state news agency says the money matters because a eurobond has to be repaid.
Half of Ulaanbaatar’s cars come off the road the day the fuel cap lapses
From 15 August to 12 September, city wide and with no zoning, cars may enter Ulaanbaatar traffic only on alternating days by plate parity, between 07:00 and 21:00. The window covers the desertification conference, the start of the school year, and the morning the petrol rationing expires. Nobody has published how many days of fuel the country holds.
Uzbekistan is guest of honour at a gathering Ankara does not convene
The Kurultaj opens on the Bugac puszta today. Tomorrow’s ceremony lists the secretary general of the Organization of Turkic States, the culture ministers of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, the president of TURKSOY and one Turkish party official. The host is a Hungarian foundation and the mayor of a village of two thousand.
Kyrgyzstan’s president says his own anti-corruption billions were overcounted
Sadyr Japarov told an interviewer this week that the four billion dollars attached to five years of confiscations was inflated by the valuations, and that he warned his security chief about it at the time. An audit is now running to establish how much the state actually holds and how little of it has sold.
Telegram went dark across Kazakhstan and nobody will name the cause
The messenger failed nationwide on Thursday morning, nine days before the parliamentary vote. The state operator says its own network was fine, the ministry says technicians are looking into it, and after service returned the operator answered the question directly: we do not know.
EcoIslamicBank's EU ban takes effect today, unmentioned in Bishkek
The European Union's transaction ban on EcoIslamicBank enters force today. It was listed on 23 July in the twenty-first sanctions package, for using Russia's financial messaging system to help Moscow work around sanctions, with a wind-down of roughly three weeks.
Nobody in Tatarstan's government has said the word citizenship
Tatarstan began paying compensation for the Nizhnekamsk deaths on Wednesday. One outlet reports that the money goes to every family regardless of citizenship. That sentence appears in no primary text the desk can find.
Ankara's condolences on 10 August went to Colombia
Eight Uzbek citizens and one Tajik citizen were killed at Nizhnekamsk on 10 August. The Turkish foreign ministry issued a condolence statement that day, numbered 155, about an earthquake in Colombia. It has published four releases since 10 August and none of them mentions the nine.
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.
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.
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.
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.