Vladimir Putin stayed in Mongolia for two days. What was the purpose of the visit?

The Mongolian word ‘manan’, which can be translated as ‘fog’, is often used to refer to the cooperation between the two largest parties in the country, i.e. the People’s Party (Mongol Ardyn Nam or abbreviated MAN) and the Democratic Party (Ardchilsan Nam or abbreviated AN). On June 28, 2024, parliamentary elections were held in Mongolia, as a result of which the composition of the new State Great Khural was determined…

On June 6, 2024, in Beijing, the governments of Uzbekistan, China and Kyrgyzstan signed a cooperation agreement on the joint promotion of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan-China railway project. The document establishes mechanisms for financing construction, project implementation, as well as a number of other issues, including those on which the three previously did not share a common, fixed position. What will this railway give Eurasia, for whom will it become a challenge and for whom an opportunity?

With the final accession of Belarus to the SCO, Mongolia found itself in the curious position of remaining one of the organisation’s two observers, and the only one whose high-level representatives attended the July 2024 summit in Astana. Nevertheless, Mongolia’s President and Foreign Minister have again spoken of preserving and developing the “proactive observer” tradition.

On June 28, 2024, Mongolia held elections to the State Great Khural, the country’s parliament. Due to the special political system in Mongolia, which is a de facto mixed republic with broad parliamentary powers, parliamentary elections are perhaps the key domestic political event in the country. They determine the composition of the Cabinet of Ministers and the real balance of power in the political arena.

The process of reforming the political system in Uzbekistan reached a fundamentally new level in 2023-2024. The transformations currently being implemented are aimed at increasing the participation of the population in political processes, but in doing so they stay away from Western patterns, instead offering original and even unique solutions that are potentially useful not only for Uzbekistan, but also for other countries in the region…

The ‘Blue Horse’ is a project noble in its designs, aiming to bring water to those lands where sand dust rules. Nevertheless, despite all the imaginary (and quite real) prospects created for Mongolia by this initiative, its implementation is almost inevitably associated with negative consequences for the vast Baikal region. Is there an optimal way out of this difficult situation?

Turkmenistan, whose geographical position seems quite favourable for promoting the initiative for the development of Eurasian transit highways in Central Asia, almost always remains outside the main focus of attention. Nevertheless, the republic is actively exploring the possibilities both of participating in foreign projects and promoting its own, and also seeks to attract as much investment as possible not only in its key oil and gas industry, but also in the field of transport infrastructure.

The military cooperation of the self-proclaimed global hegemon with a small and critically remote state turns out to be, upon careful consideration, multifaceted and profound. A number of facts, showing the active immersion of the United States in the defence sector of Mongolia, prove this to be evident.

Today, in the era of active development of green energy, which has swept not only developed but also developing countries, traditional energy sources such as brown coal remain important in Mongolia – even though renewable energy sources are being developed in parallel in the country. The authorities of the country, where all major energy facilities were built by foreign (in this case Soviet) specialists many decades ago, have in recent years begun to turn their attention back to thermal power generation, abandoning utopian notions of renewable energy as a universal “panacea” capable of ridding the country of the threat of energy shortages without harming the environment.

The years 2023-2024 can confidently be called a “boom” period for the development of solar and wind energy in Kyrgyzstan. One of the word’s leading countries in terms of the share of renewable energy in its energy mix, Kyrgyzstan has recently become a haven for investments in green energy from a wide variety of nations. This all ties in with the ambition of Kyrgyzstan’s government to make the Central Asian republic self-sufficient in terms of energy and then transform into an exporter of electricity.

Kyrgyzstan’s railways currently consist of six sections connected to each other only through the territories of the neighbouring republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In particular, we are talking about the longest northern section – about 300 kilometres from the border with Kazakhstan to Lake Issyk-Kul, as well as five short (a few dozen kilometres) sections, which are dead-end branches to major cities from the railway that runs in an arc through the Uzbek part of the Fergana Valley…