Archives Russia - Page 35 of 42 - New Eastern Outlook

Iran is attempting to create a gas alliance involving Qatar. While Turkey is attempting to rescue the grain deal, Iran is actively promoting the concept of establishing a gas hub of its own. The gas swap between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via Iran served as a test phase. Later in November 2022, Russia and Iran started researching the idea of swapping gas supplies, which initially would be around 10 billion cubic meters per year. Iran formally proposed to Russia and Turkmenistan a large-scale gas swap in February 2023, in which Russia would get gas in the north and Turkmenistan would supply it in exchange in either direction in the south. They specifically discussed deliveries of gas to Pakistan, near whose border Iran is building a gas pipeline with a capacity of 100 million m3/day of gas (about 36.5 billion m3/year), opening up the prospect of supplying India in the future.

The current financial crisis in Turkey demonstrates the rapid devaluation of the Turkish lira. After the second round of presidential elections, the Turkish lira has been falling in value almost daily, breaking new historic lows. Thus, on June 22 it overcame the psychological mark of 24 lira per dollar. All of this was the result of obvious irregularities in Turkey’s financial management, when the authorities, for populist purposes and pragmatic reasons of increasing the number of their supporters in elections, artificially kept the low credit rate of the Central Bank to encourage small business and support domestic production. However, the market system of the Turkish economy, one way or another, is integrated into the global economy, where the rules of financial lending and investment are determined not by the Turks, but by their Western allies. Accordingly, the policy of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey must take into account the international economic situation and established norms.

On June 22, the visit of the Speaker of the Parliament (State Great Khural) of Mongolia to the Russian Federation ended. It is important to note that this is the first top-level Mongolian visit to Russia since the start of the Special Military Operation; the country’s president last visited Russia on an official visit in December 2021, the foreign minister in the summer of the same year, and Parliament Speaker Gombojavyn Zandanshatar himself in 2019. Even though there was no meeting between the speaker of the parliament and the Russian president and foreign minister, the visit can be considered one of the most significant events in Russian-Mongolian ties in the last year. Gombojav Zandanshatar is a member of the Mongolian political elite who has personal memories of Russia; he was educated at Baikal State University…