After almost a two-month delay, on February 23, Kazakhstani company KazTransOil finally began exporting oil to Germany, sending the first shipment of 20,000 tons of Kazakhstani oil (Biz Media, February 27). In enabling this supply, Kazakhstan reached an agreement with Russian energy company Transneft to... MORE

At the recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was ready to establish a joint Chinese-Russian working group to develop the Northern Sea Route (NSR). However, the offer has not led to a new Chinese contract to purchase more... MORE

On March 22, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu declared that Russia will complete the modernization of the missile defense system around Moscow by the end of 2023. He also announced the upcoming deployment of new units: one air defense division, one air defense brigade,... MORE

On February 13, the groundbreaking ceremony was held in Baku for the largest thermal power station (TSP) yet to be built in Azerbaijan with a planned capacity of 1,280 megawatts (MW) (Apa.az, February 13). The project’s total value is estimated at around $400 million, which... MORE

Introduction On February 6, the China Meteorological Association (CMA) published the 2022 China Climate Bulletin (中国气候公报) (China Climate Bulletin, February 7). The annual report provides an overall analysis of China’s climate conditions and tracks significant meteorological disasters and major climate events from the previous year... MORE

For many years, the successive leaders of Kyrgyzstan could not capitalize on their country’s strategic location along the shortest route connecting China to Central Asia and further onward to the Middle East and Europe. Now, hopes are cautiously mounting that this might be changing. Current... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the opening of a north-south trade route between the Russian Federation and the Indian Ocean via Iran a priority for more than a decade. But the project has run into increasing difficulties on both of the two possible land... MORE

In early March 2023, at a meeting in Harbin, Chinese officials committed Beijing to building a railway north from China into the enormous and resource-rich Sakha Republic that dominates the Russian Far East—yet is rather far from the Chinese border (Promvest.info, March 8; Kolyma.ru, March... MORE

In late February 2023, the State Agency of Azerbaijan Automobile Roads announced that 73 percent of the Horadiz-Jabrayil-Zangilan-Agbend highway has been completed (News.az, February 28). This highway, which runs to Agbend, the westernmost town of mainland Azerbaijan, is planned to link up with the Zangezur... MORE

Over the past few weeks, media reports have proliferated that Tehran is gearing up to build a joint drone production plant in Russia (Euromaidan Press, February 6). According to the reports, Western intelligence believes that the production plant in question is part of a $1... MORE