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Trump waives every Graham act duty two days before the deadline as Rubio reaches Samarkand
An executive order signed on Friday 16 October adds a 500% duty to goods from Russia and 100% duties to the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas and to five facilitators of evasion, then waives all three until the president or the secretary of state decides otherwise. Two days later Marco Rubio landed in Samarkand for Monday’s C5+1, with a business delegation and the duties set aside.
Kyrgyzstan’s presidential race has one filer as two ex-officials fail the language test
One person has applied to the Central Election Commission to stand in the presidential election of 27 January 2027, 24.kg’s mirror reported on 16 October, as former interior minister Omurbek Suvanaliev and Syimyk Zhapykeev failed the written part of the state-language examination and were offered a retake in three working days. The commission says retakes are outside its competence.
Georgia’s party-ban hearings open in Batumi on 21 October as the opposition plans protests
The Constitutional Court’s proceedings on the petition to ban opposition parties begin on 21 October, Coalition for Change leader Nika Gvaramia said on 15 October, naming Batumi as the venue and promising to attend, Interpressnews reported. The opposition alliance announced a protest campaign from 25 October to a rally on 28 November, and Georgian Dream’s majority meets Bidzina Ivanishvili on 17 October.
Baku keeps the CICA chair to 2028 and an Azerbaijani takes the secretary general’s post
The seventh CICA summit in Baku on 15 October extended Azerbaijan’s chairmanship to 2028, made Azerbaijani ambassador Sultan Hajiyev secretary general to 2030 and admitted Laos as the 29th member, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said. Kazakhstan founded the forum in 1992 and a Kazakh ran its secretariat until this week. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the members had agreed to turn CICA into a full international organisation, a line the ministry omits.
Meredov receives the EU envoy as a 10 million euro skills programme meets in Ashgabat
Turkmenistan’s foreign minister met the European Union’s special representative for Central Asia, Eduards Stiprais, on 14 October, the ministry said, on the second day of the fifth high-level meeting of DARYA, a 10 million euro EU programme on skills for the five Central Asian states that the European Training Foundation runs.
Pashinyan sets terms for peace: no enclaves on either side, all roads open, no claims
Armenia’s prime minister set out on 14 October what the country should look like after the peace agreement with Azerbaijan is signed and ratified: the same 29,743 square kilometres the state counts today, borders drawn from the Alma-Ata Declaration, enclaves exchanged for land of equal size and all roads open, within TRIPP and beyond it.
Four Central Asian presidents are in Baku for the seventh CICA summit
Tokayev, Mirziyoyev, Rahmon and Japarov are in Baku for the seventh summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia on 15 October, their third joint appearance in eight days. Azerbaijan closes two years in the chair with a Baku declaration expected, Laos is to be admitted as the 29th member, and the forum’s depositary and secretary general are Kazakh.
Armenia counts 45,098 new citizens among the people displaced from Karabakh in 2023
Deputy interior minister Armen Ghazaryan told a working discussion in the National Assembly on 13 October that 53,099 applications for Armenian citizenship have come from people forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, adults and minors, and that 45,098 have received it. Uptake rose, he said, once citizenship became a condition of the state housing assistance programme.
Venice Commission finds Georgia’s grants and party laws block an opposition from surviving
Europe’s constitutional-law body, the Venice Commission, has published its opinion on the amendments Georgia’s parliament adopted in March to the Law on Grants, the organic law on political associations and the criminal code, Interpressnews reported on 13 October. The legislation imposes disproportionate and unnecessary restrictions on freedom of association and expression, the commission found, “preventing the formation and survival of a political opposition”.
Kazakhstan’s election commission sets 29 November for the maslikhats as Amanat withdraws
The Central Election Commission called extraordinary elections to maslikhats of all levels for Sunday 29 November at a sitting on 13 October, the day after Tokayev’s decree dissolved every council. Seven of the eight registered parties are admitted: Amanat, whose deputies held most of the seats, wrote to the commission that it will not take part.
Tajikistan’s parliament moves the only Central Asian ICC member toward the exit
The lower house of Tajikistan’s parliament has voted to withdraw from the Rome Statute, Asia-Plus reported on 14 October, four weeks after the chamber’s council listed a draft resolution to that effect, and the chamber has printed nothing. Tajikistan is the only Central Asian state that ratified the treaty, and in November 2025 the court’s pre-trial chamber asked it to explain why Vladimir Putin was not arrested in Dushanbe.
Rubio brings 200 business leaders to Samarkand as the Graham act’s 30-day deadline arrives
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be in Samarkand between 17 and 22 October for the C5+1 ministerial, bilateral meetings with all five governments and a delegation of more than 200 business leaders, the State Department said on 13 October. Sunday 18 October is the thirtieth day of the Graham act, the deadline it sets for the president’s first duties on the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas.
Tashkent puts a former prosecutor in charge of defence and fills the Syrdarya seat
Shavkat Mirziyoyev appointed major general Botir Kudratkhodjaev defence minister on Monday, after the Legislative Chamber approved him the same day, replacing lieutenant general Shukhrat Khalmukhamedov, who had held the post since November 2024. A second decree made Doniyor Kadirov acting governor of Syrdarya region, the seat Erkinjon Turdimov left last week for the education and science ministry.
Kallas calls the EU’s Georgia policy short on both counts and returns to it in January
The EU’s current approach to Georgia neither creates sufficient pressure for change nor lets the bloc fully pursue its European strategic interests, Kaja Kallas said after the foreign ministers’ council in Luxembourg on Monday, and the ministers will return to it in January. In the Council’s own summary that reads as grave concern and an in-depth discussion expected in January. The governing party answered before she spoke and after.
Tokayev dissolves every maslikhat in Kazakhstan, with new elections due by 12 December
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the decree ending the powers of every maslikhat in Kazakhstan on Monday, after the consultations with the prime minister and the Kurultai’s chairman that article 88 of the new constitution requires. The Central Election Commission must now call early elections of all local councils and, under article 101 of the election law, hold them within two months, by 12 December.
Tashkent names a first deputy prime minister to run the new education and science ministry
Erkinjon Turdimov, governor of Syrdarya region since January 2025, was appointed by presidential decree on Friday as first deputy prime minister and minister of education and science, Gazeta.uz reported at 19:16. The post is new in the cabinet’s structure, created alongside the ministry that merged school and higher education this month. A secretariat for education, science and health answers to Saida Mirziyoyeva.
WHO leaves the Irkutsk death unexplained while the region’s plague watch stays on
The World Health Organization’s outbreak notice of 10 October classifies the death of a laboratory worker in Irkutsk as pneumonia of undetermined aetiology, finds no evidence of transmission and says a laboratory exposure “cannot be fully excluded”. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia kept border controls and anti-plague stations on alert for a week. That watch is a Soviet inheritance, and its running cost is the figure the open record lacks.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court rejects the opposition’s challenge on the Catholicos clause
The Constitutional Court refused on Friday to examine a petition by the Strong Armenia and Armenia factions against the National Assembly’s decision approving the government programme, which envisages the removal of Catholicos Karekin II, ruling that programme provisions are political statements without normative content. Speaker Ruben Rubinyan also signed the order composing a parliamentary inquiry committee on the clergy that only majority deputies joined.
Kobakhidze calls the European Parliament worse than the Supreme Soviet of the late 1980s
Georgia’s prime minister answered Thursday’s 445-vote resolution on Friday by saying the European Parliament reminds him of the Supreme Soviet, which in his words was in better shape in the 1980s, while Speaker Shalva Papuashvili counted the ninth hostile resolution and Kakha Kaladze called them riddled with lies. EU foreign ministers take up Georgia under current affairs in Luxembourg on Monday.
Putin, Aliyev and Pezeshkian hold the first three-way summit since 2017 at Avaza
Vladimir Putin, Ilham Aliyev and Masoud Pezeshkian held a trilateral meeting after the Caspian Ecological Summit on Friday, Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Interfax, the first sitting of the Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran format since Tehran in November 2017. APA’s correspondent reported the North-South transport corridor as the main topic, Aliyev then received Pezeshkian separately, and Putin boarded his plane at Turkmenbashi after two full-format bilaterals in two days.