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2 Uzbek-Kazakh border posts go round the clock as trucks through Syrdarya rise 10%
Uzbekistan's Customs Committee said on Monday evening that the Malik-Syrdarya and Ok Oltin-Tselinny crossings with Kazakhstan will move to 24-hour operation and that the Gishtkuprik customs post is to open in the fourth quarter of 2026. More than 9,200 trucks passed through Syrdarya in September, 10% more than a year earlier, Spot reported at 20:43 Tashkent time.
AIIB signs €158 million for Georgia's Kakheti roads under the Trans-Caspian corridor project
Georgia and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank signed a loan of about €158.5 million on Monday at the bank's annual meeting in Doha, the finance ministry said: two new four-lane sections of the Kakheti highway, Badiauri to Chalaubani and Chalaubani to Bakurtsikhe, and a road from Gurjaani to Telavi, 67.4 kilometres in all, inside a €316.8 million road package the World Bank is co-financing.
Customs chiefs of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye sign a Middle Corridor protocol in Goygol
The fifth meeting of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Türkiye trilateral committee on customs sat in Goygol district on Monday: Shahin Baghirov for Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee, deputy trade minister Sezai Ucarmak for Türkiye and Revenue Service head Mamuka Baratashvili for Georgia. Faster transit procedures on the Middle Corridor and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway were named the priorities, and a protocol was signed, APA reported at 11:50 Baku time.
Tokayev in Berlin: German business expects 37 projects worth €1.8 billion, Merz this afternoon
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev arrived in Germany on Monday evening at Frank-Walter Steinmeier's invitation, Akorda said. The German-Kazakh Business Forum opens on Tuesday at the Haus der Deutschen Wirtschaft in Berlin, where the Ost-Ausschuss expects 37 bilateral projects worth €1.8 billion to be signed, and Chancellor Friedrich Merz receives him at the chancellery in the afternoon to talk energy and raw materials.
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.
Japarov asks TİKA for hospitals, farm laboratories and small hydro in the high mountains
Sadyr Japarov received the head of Turkey’s cooperation agency TİKA, Abdullah Eren, on Monday and proposed that its next projects in Kyrgyzstan go to health care, the modernisation of agricultural laboratories, vocational education and the training of green-energy specialists, with a separate line for remote and high-mountain districts, the presidential administration said in a readout Bulak carried at 13:45.
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.
Uzbekistan puts its energy sector on three-year plans and bars projects outside them
A presidential decree of 22 September, reported by Spot on Saturday, makes the energy ministry, the economy and finance ministry and the energy market regulator publish three-year demand forecasts and a three-year supply plan by the end of every October, with investment plans to follow by the end of November. No individual privileges may be granted inside the projects, and no project outside the plan may be run.
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.
Myrzakhmetov’s first order at the defence ministry: fewer reports, more readiness
Aidos Myrzakhmetov held his first working meeting with the defence ministry’s leadership on Monday afternoon, a day after his appointment, and set his priorities: real combat readiness, training built on today’s wars and drones, fewer administrative procedures, reports and meetings of no practical value, and purchases matched to what the troops need. Every soldier, he said, must feel safe.
Georgian Railway buys 200 wagons from Russia for $9.6 million after every tender failed
The railway signed a direct contract with the Roslavl wagon-repair plant for 200 open wagons at $48,000 each, on a decision of its supervisory board of 27 August, Novosti Gruzii reported on 24 September. Director general Lasha Abashidze gave two reasons: no European maker builds freight wagons for the 1,520 mm gauge, and the Russian price was the lowest.
ADB lends Mongolia $100 million against disasters that killed 726 people in a decade
The Asian Development Bank approved a $100 million loan on Monday for the National Emergency Management Agency: firefighting vehicles, search and rescue, and a digital risk system with early warning. Its ledger for 2015 to 2024 counts more than 40,500 disasters, 726 deaths, 11.5 million livestock lost and ₮1.9 trillion of damage.
Uzbekistan moves funded pensions out of Xalq Bank in 2027 and hands them to hired managers
The draft decree under public discussion until Wednesday transfers the funded pension system from Xalq Bank to the Pension Fund from 2027, the fund’s executive director Murodbek Otajonov said on Friday, and the money will then go to investment managers chosen by competition. A separate supervisory board, with foreign experts on it, will take the investment decisions instead of the government.
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.
Georgia’s 19 banks earned 2.56 billion lari in 8 months, 20% more than a year earlier, with Bank of Georgia and TBC holding 87% of the profit and 75% of the assets
The National Bank of Georgia’s figures for January to August 2026, as Business Media Georgia tabulated them on Thursday, give the sector a net profit of 2,564.6 million lari, up 20% on the same months of 2025, on assets of 115.2 billion lari. Bank of Georgia earned 1,291 million and TBC 936.8 million, together 87% of the total, and the two hold 75% of the assets; 15 banks were profitable and 4 lost money, Silk Bank most, at 18.26 million lari.
Russian gas flows to Armenia again after 10 days of pipeline work: 2.7 billion cubic metres a year through one line across Georgia while Simonyan names four suppliers for the future
Gazprom Armenia said gas deliveries through the North Caucasus-Transcaucasia trunk pipeline resumed on 25 September after a suspension “from 15 September” for planned maintenance and repair on the Russian section, Interfax reported at 12:20 Moscow time. The line carried about 2.7 billion cubic metres to Armenia in 2025, beside the roughly 476 million a year that arrive from Iran in the gas-for-electricity swap, and Interfax put the contract price at $177.5 per 1,000 cubic metres to the end of 2026 or the start of 2027; Security Council secretary Alen Simonyan had given $165 at the border on 16 September, frozen since 2019.
Azerbaijan’s second investment forum closes on 12 documents by APA’s list and 11 by Report.az’s: an Azerbaijani-Omani fund into Azer-Turk Bank, SOCAR into water, no sums printed
The second Azerbaijan International Investment Forum in Baku, held under President Aliyev’s patronage, produced a signing list of 12 documents in APA’s count at 12:47 and 11 in Report.az’s at 14:10, with no sum attached to any of them. The one ownership line is the Azerbaijani-Omani investment fund’s non-controlling stake in Azer-Turk Bank, signed for the Azerbaijani side by Deyanet Sadullayev, acting chief executive of the Azerbaijan Investment Holding; SOCAR’s line is a cooperation agreement with the State Water Resources Agency and Esyasoft.
Friday’s Syrdarya trip reached Bishkek and Tajikistan as well: two districts of the Kyrgyz capital were dark until 09:24 while Tajikistan’s grid steadied in minutes
The dawn trip at Uzbekistan’s new Syrdarya plant, which took 1,600 MW off the Uzbek grid at 05:05 Tashkent time and split Kazakhstan’s north-south transit, also cut power in the Pervomaisky and Sverdlovsky districts of Bishkek for two to three and a half hours and set off the emergency automation in Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz operator and the Tajik ministry said on Friday. Kyrgyzstan’s National Electric Networks restored the city centre at about 08:15 and the microdistricts from about 09:24 Bishkek time; Tajikistan’s energy ministry said its system steadied “within minutes” and works normally, and that the cause is being established with the dispatch centre Energia and the neighbouring systems.
The Caspian search ends at 14 dead and 3 rescued as five officers are detained, the Navy’s chief of staff among them
The defence ministry found the last two of the missing at about 09:15 on Friday, Sergeant Mansur Gumarov and Seaman Miras Turdybekuly, and declared the search over: of the 17 servicemen swept into the sea on Thursday during the Khazar Korgany-2026 exercise, 14 are dead and 3 were rescued. By early afternoon the interior ministry said five officials of the defence ministry were in the temporary detention facility of the Aktau police as suspects, the chief of staff and first deputy commander of the Naval Forces, two commanders of military units, the commander of a marine infantry company and the commander of the patrol boat Qaisar, from which the men were disembarking 43 km from Aktau in adverse weather.
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.