Since the third quarter of 2023, the Mongolian public have been shaken by regular media reports of gasoline and diesel shortages in various parts of the country. Furthermore, to lend credence to these reports, a regular succession of publications have appeared stating just how many days’ worth of fuel are left in the country. This trend has become particularly evident since the Russian Federation introduced restrictions on fuel exports in 2023 to stabilize its domestic market. Mongolia receives more than 95% of all its fuel by rail from its northern neighbor, and more than 75% of all of Ulaanbaatar’s fuel imports come from Rosneft…

On December 21, 2023, Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov gave the go-ahead for the construction of the new Bakhty-Ayagoz railway line in the Abay region. The project aims to construct a 272-kilometer double-track railway that will extend to the border of Kazakhstan and the PRC. The new line is expected to become operational in 2027. Currently, there are two rail border crossings with developed freight terminals on the Sino-Kazakh border: Khorgos and Dostyk-Alashankou. Almost 50% of all cargo transported along the China-Europe route passes through these border crossings…

In 1991, Saudi Arabia was one of the first countries to recognize Uzbekistan as a new independent Central Asian republic, marking a significant milestone in the modern history of relations between the two nations. During the 1990s and 2010s, the two countries cooperated on several occasions. One notable example is Uzbekistan’s active participation in so-called mosque diplomacy, which involved the construction of religious sites in several states with large Muslim communities, funded by Saudi Arabia…

Chairman of the Halk Maslakhaty of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov visited the United Arab Emirates from January 4-6, 2024. During his visit, the representative of the Republic held meetings with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as well as the representative of the UAE President for Affairs with Turkmenistan and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dragon Oil. According to state websites, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov focused on the prospects of cooperation between the UAE and Turkmenistan in developing oil and gas resources, transport corridors, and green energy…

Low-capacity nuclear power plants are one of the most promising areas that determine the key trends in the development of nuclear energy on a global scale. Once complex, dangerous, labour-intensive and science-intensive NPP development projects, the cost of implementation of which implied economic profitability only in case of impressive scale and capacity of the projects, could be implemented only in the most developed countries of the world.  Now such projects, especially due to the scientific breakthrough…

Rosatom’s most active development in Central Asia to date has been the creation of the first energy facility of its kind in Uzbekistan – the Jizzakh NPP. In September 2018, Russia and Uzbekistan signed an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of a nuclear power plant. In September 2023, the Joint Commission at the level of the heads of government of Russia and Uzbekistan discussed issues related to the construction of the NPP. Survey work commenced at a promising construction site near Lake Tuzkan around the same time. On November 28, 2023, Alexey Likhachev…

On October 8, 2023, negotiations were held between representatives of the transport and railway departments of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey to discuss the details of the new Eurasian transport corridor, designed to connect China with the European Union along a new route. This project is a development of the China-Central Asia-West Asia-Europe corridor proposed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013; however, it assumed a slightly different route configuration that did not affect…

The September-December 2023 period witnesses significant progress in the harmonization of the most territorially disputed border in Central Asia, namely the border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Of the nearly 1,000 kilometers of the line separating the two republics, almost 400 kilometers remained uncoordinated for many years Now the parties are announcing deadlines for the completion of all work designed to exhaust the conflict potential of the problem. Work on harmonizing the Tajik-Kyrgyz border intensified in October 2023 – almost 75 kilometers of the border…

On December 20, 2023, the second stage of hearings of the Temporary Control Committee established by a special resolution of the State Great Khural of Mongolia to monitor the situation at Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi, the state-owned company operating the largest mineral deposit in the country, began. Following a December 2022 corruption scandal involving a discrepancy between coal export data and figures published by Chinese customs, a special regulation was imposed on Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi, which was renewed in November 2023. This Control Committee was also established…

In the second half of 2023, Rosatom’s activities to promote and implement new NPP projects in the Central Asian republics entered an unprecedentedly active phase. At present, such initiatives, which are at different stages of discussion and implementation, are proposed to three of the five countries of the region – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. But by far the largest of the promising projects in the region is the concept of creating the first nuclear power plant in the leading country in Central Asia in terms of electricity consumption, namely Kazakhstan. This particular project…

November-December 2023 were almost unprecedentedly harsh months in Mongolia: most of the country was under a massive layer of snow, the thickness of which reached up to 50-60 centimetres in many regions. At the same time, mid-December was also frosty, with temperatures in some parts of the country dropping to -50 degrees Celsius. In addition to weather threats and challenges traditional for most countries and peoples of the world – such as failures in the work of transport, industrial enterprises, a sharp jump in injuries among the population, hypothermia…

The blatant negligence of transnational corporations towards their employees in developing countries is clearly visible in their activities in Kazakhstan, which is not for the first time the site of tragedies of colossal proportions caused by the negligence of employers: just remember the recent disaster at the Kostenko mine in October this year, which belonged to a subsidiary of Arcelor-Mittal. At that time, more than 40 miners died as a result of methane leakage caused by chronic safety violations…