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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.
Kyrgyzstan's appeal court drops the seizure-of-power article against Tashiev and 7 others, and cuts their probation to 2 years
Bishkek City Court on Thursday moved the “letter 75” case from article 326 of the Criminal Code, violent seizure of power, to article 195, obstruction of the exercise of electoral rights, and sentenced all 8 defendants to 4 years with 2 years of probation supervision in place of prison. The prosecution had asked for 9 years for each of them. The defence is going to the Supreme Court.
Kazakhstan's energy ministry says CPC loading stopped on 2 buoys after Tuesday's drone incident and resumed after checks
Loading at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's marine terminal near Novorossiysk was halted on single-point moorings 2 and 3 after “an incident with an unmanned aerial vehicle” close to the terminal on 8 September and resumed in normal mode once the cargo systems and the tankers had been inspected, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Energy said on Wednesday. No restrictions were placed on accepting oil from Kazakh shippers, it said. The consortium's own channel has carried no operational statement since 30 July.
Russia's defence minister tells Dushanbe the Afghan border gets special attention and its drone units get Russian help
Andrei Belousov used a reception for the 35th anniversary of Tajikistan's independence on Tuesday evening to say that Moscow pays special attention to strengthening the Tajik-Afghan border and takes an active part in forming the republic's aviation, unmanned-systems and special-purpose units, TASS and Izvestia reported. A week after Putin met Rahmon in Bishkek, the visit put the Russian defence minister in Dushanbe on the eve of the holiday.
Drones kill 4 in Novorossiysk and set a fuel-oil terminal alight in the port that ships Kazakhstan's oil
An overnight drone attack on Novorossiysk killed four people, a child among them, and injured 29, the governor of Krasnodar Krai said on Wednesday morning. Ukrainian monitoring channels and satellite heat data placed a fire at the fuel-oil terminal inside the commercial port. The city is the sea end of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, the route for more than 80% of Kazakhstan's oil exports, and no statement on loading had appeared on the consortium's channel by evening; the desk did not reach Transneft.
A 4-hour blackout crosses four Turkmen provinces without an official word
Power failed across Ashgabat and the Ahal, Mary, Lebap and Balkan provinces at about 17:30 on Sunday, 30 August, and came back district by district over the next 7 hours. Three independent channels have described it since; the government has described nothing.
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.
Two Afghans die crossing the Pyanj, Tajikistan's border service says
Tajikistan's State Committee for National Security says border guards killed 2 Afghan citizens who crossed the river at Fatkhobod in the southern district of Jaikhun, ignored demands to stop and put up armed resistance. The guards recovered 17.3 kilograms of hashish, a Kalashnikov rifle and a Makarov pistol.
Russia's border cameras have turned away 68,900 people
The interior ministry put a number on its biometric border experiment: about 14 million foreigners have given fingerprints and photographs at the checkpoints since December 2024, and 68,900 of them were on the entry-ban list and were refused. The count is cumulative, a running total rather than a surge. From 1 September it acquires a domestic partner: the Amina app becomes mandatory for visa-free arrivals in 11 regions, and in Moscow and its region the only way to register.
Drones return to Nizhnekamsk, and the airports close before dawn
A massed drone attack crossed Tatarstan in the night into Thursday, densest over the Zakamsk industrial zone, 10 days after a strike on the same district killed 13 people, 9 of them Central Asian workers. Officials count injuries, no deaths. By Friday before dawn, flight restrictions reached Kazan, Samara and 5 more airports.
The commander who said they could hang him has surrendered
Juma Khan Fateh gave up on Monday, ending nearly a week of fighting between his men and Taliban forces across the river from Tajikistan’s Darvaz district. He was flown to Faizabad, the terms are not public, and the mine workers trapped by the fighting have not been accounted for.
A Taliban feud crossed the river and killed a woman in Darvaz
Gunfire from the Afghan bank killed a 21-year-old woman in Tajikistan’s Darvaz district and drew a protest note from Dushanbe, the first official Tajik reaction to days of fighting in Badakhshan between Taliban forces and a dissident commander.
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.
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.
Uzbekistan's answer to eight dead workers is a special flight
Tashkent's response to the deaths of eight of its citizens at Nizhnekamsk arrived on Tuesday as logistics. A working group flew to Kazan, the emergencies ministry said the bodies would come home on a special flight, and no Uzbek government text named who fired the drones.
A drone strike on Tatarstan kills eight Uzbek workers
Ukrainian drones struck Nizhnekamsk in Tatarstan on Monday and killed at least 13 people, among them 8 Uzbek construction workers and a 30-year-old Tajik. Tashkent formed a government commission the same day and flies a working group to Russia today.
One littoral state speaks about the Caspian
Turkmenistan called the attack on a vessel in the Caspian inadmissible and named nobody at all. Kyiv answered Tehran the same day, and Baku and Tehran shut each other’s broadcasters.
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.
The strike wave reaches the province of Kazakhstan’s Gulf terminal
US forces announced another large-scale overnight wave of strikes on Iran, and the morning’s imagery includes a destroyed bridge in Hormozgan province, with fatalities reported. Hormozgan is where Bandar Abbas stands, and Bandar Abbas is where Kazakhstan signed its 27-year terminal lease three weeks ago. The war is now taking apart the infrastructure around the bet.
The border that fought two wars gets its first survey posts
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have begun installing the first demarcation posts on their 1,008-kilometer border, starting where their frontiers meet Uzbekistan’s. In 2021 and 2022 this line produced two shooting wars. The concrete now going into the ground is the physical end of a process the two presidents signed on paper in March 2025.