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The Caspian data cable finishes its seabed leg
Kazakhtelecom and its Azerbaijani partner have finished laying fibre across the Caspian floor between Aktau and Sumgait, the hardest stretch of a line due to complete testing this autumn.
Uzbekistan’s satellite reaches orbit with its own AI on board
Samarkand-2028 went up from a sea platform off China’s Shandong coast on Wednesday morning, carrying a hyperspectral camera and an AI module Uzcosmos says its own engineers built.
All of Tajikistan’s imported wheat now comes from one country
Tajikistan bought 660,800 tonnes of wheat abroad in the first half of 2026, every tonne of it from Kazakhstan, while its own output fell 13.3% to 510,000 tonnes.
A first survey seats two parties in the Kurultai
Eighteen days before Kazakhstan elects its first Kurultai, the one party rating published in the campaign gives Adilet 65.1% and puts every other party except Auyl under the 5% bar.
Turkmenistan reports growth the IMF cannot find
Ashgabat’s half-year review claims GDP growth of 6.3%. The IMF projects 2.4% for the year and says it builds its own estimates because the official numbers are hard to reconcile with anything else.
The lake the region meets on is losing its ice
Kyrgyzhydromet has measured what the heat is doing. A third of the Issyk-Kul basin’s glacier area is gone against the early catalogues, 23.1% of it in the past 7 to 10 years, and the region’s summits keep convening on the shore of the evidence.
Tashkent sends its geologists deeper
The same day its office published the demand number that sends jet-fuel buyers abroad, Uzbekistan’s presidency reviewed the supply answer: $38.8 million for seismic modernisation, surveys reading down to 8,000 metres and a directive on uninterrupted fuel.
Bektenov turns shelf access into a directive
Kazakhstan’s Tuesday cabinet put first-half manufacturing output at 16 trillion tenge, about $34 billion at Tuesday’s official rate, up 9.8%, and ordered fair access to retail chains for the goods behind the number.
The premiers follow the presidents to the lake
The EAEU’s heads of government meet in Cholpon-Ata on 6 and 7 August, the Kyrgyz cabinet confirmed on Tuesday, giving the same shore its second summit inside a week. For Nikol Pashinyan it would be a first multilateral room since his reappointment, three days after his cabinet was re-decreed.
ExxonMobil promises Kazakhstan the long term
Three days after Chevron’s chief executive spoke for the CPC, ExxonMobil’s upstream president sat with the prime minister in Astana and confirmed, in the government’s readout, plans for a long-term presence in Kazakh oil and gas.
Armenia’s cabinet comes back in a day with one new name
Eleven of twelve ministers returned to their chairs on Monday, the day after Nikol Pashinyan’s reappointment; the one new face runs high-tech industry. The parliament’s new speaker is Ruben Rubinyan, the man who has led the normalization talks with Turkey.
A US visa now takes a $15,000 deposit from three Central Asian states
The State Department made its visa-bond rule permanent on 3 August. Applicants from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan will generally post $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 to receive a tourist or business visa. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are not on the list.
Mongolia rations the pump, and Bishkek pays double
From today Mongolian filling stations serve cars by the last digit of the plate, with each purchase capped at 50,000 tugriks, roughly $13. In Bishkek the cabinet orders tight control of a market where petrol now costs nearly twice what it does across the Kazakh border.
A 27% jump in demand sends Uzbekistan’s jet-fuel buyers to Georgia and Iraq
Tashkent says it needs 375,000 tonnes of aviation fuel in the second half of the year, 27% more than a year earlier, and the supplier that used to cover the region’s gap has all but left the market: Russian jet-fuel deliveries to Central Asia fell by more than 92% in June against May.
The drone war off Novorossiysk stops sparing crews
Since Saturday the approaches to Kazakhstan’s main export outlet have seen a cargo ship sunk and a Turkish-crewed freighter set ablaze, with three sailors gravely wounded. The terminal that carries more than 80% of Kazakh oil exports keeps loading at a third of its June intake, and July’s total has still not been published.
Kashagan’s arbitration deadline passes in silence
The end-July date for seating the arbitral panel has passed; no announcement of its composition has surfaced, and the enforcement the arbitration was meant to check keeps running.
Mongolia queues for petrol two weeks before COP17
AI-92 stocks fell by nearly half in three weeks to 17 days of consumption, queues at the pumps run five and six hours, and the government’s answer is measured in storage tanks and years.
Pashinyan is reappointed the day his government resigns
Armenia’s new National Assembly convened on Sunday morning; the same day the government resigned by force of the constitution and President Vahagn Khachaturyan signed Nikol Pashinyan back in.
A declaration at the lake, and a refinery on the table
Six presidents signed the Cholpon-Ata Declaration on Friday, and Tajikistan used the occasion to propose a regional refinery - an idea that the region's fuel squeeze has increasingly reinforced.
Chevron speaks first on the CPC
The fullest account of the damaged export route came from Houston on Friday: the pipeline is flowing, two of three moorings are working, and Washington and Astana are discussing guarantees to keep it that way.