APRIL 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officials from Russia’s military arrived in Yerevan for talks with their Armenian counterparts, media reported. According to reports, the talks focused on strategy, military planning and the potential joint use of force. Armenia and Russia have been pulling increasingly close together.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s state statistics agency released figures which showed that economic activity in the first three months of the year dropped by 0.2%, media reported. The biggest fall was in industrial output. Armenia’s economy is struggling with the after effects of the global economic crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Property prices in Almaty have risen by 25% over the past year as the economy rebounds and the city attracts migrants looking for work, media reported. Kazakhstan’s economy is still relatively fragile and the large property price increase has triggered concerns of a bubble.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a surprising, and perhaps risky, move, Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered the authorities to scrap a monthly handout of petrol to car owners.
Mr Berdymukhamedov had introduced the subsidy in 2008 to ease a massive increase in the price of fuel. Mr Berdymukhamedov’s eccentric predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov had set the price of petrol at an unrealistic 2 cents per litre. Mr Berdymukhamedov wanted to raise the price to 22 cents.
Reuters quoted Turkmenistan’s state media as saying that the abolition of the fuel allowance was needed to “help sustain the growth of the national economy, achieve the efficient use of oil products and ensure their orderly converting to cash on the domestic market”.
In other words, Mr Berdymukhamedov decided that it was time to wean the population off the free fuel allowance.
Turkmenistan can, after all, afford the petrol giveaway. It has grown rich from energy exports. These exports are mainly gas. It produces roughly 10m tonnes of crude oil a year, most of which it refines into oil products locally.
Salaries are low in Turkmenistan. The sudden cut in fuel subsidies may impact people and increase resentment.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a show of solidarity, the European Union will speed up a deal with Georgia to improve integration of its political and economic links.
The foreign ministers of Germany and France, Frank- Walter Steinmeier and Laurent Fabius, announced the plan on a visit to Tbilisi.
Their main aim was to reassure Georgia that the West does want Georgia in its club.
“I am sure that by the end of June the agreement will have been signed and that it is an important milestone in the history of Georgian and European relations,” Mr Steinmeier said according to media reports.
Since Russia’s de facto annexation of Crimea, the West has sent conflicting messages to Georgia. US President Barack Obama said that neither Georgia nor Ukraine would be part of NATO, although the NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen then said that the Western military alliance wanted closer associations with both countries.
In any case, clearly wary of Georgia’s difficult relations with Russia, Mr Steinmeier and Mr Fabius were eager to underline that the cooperation deal with the EU did not preclude Georgian trade with Russia.
“We don’t see any contradiction between the signing of this agreement and Georgia’s economic relations with other countries, particularly Russia,” Mr Fabius said.
For Georgia, the turmoil in Ukraine has thrown its own thorny relationship with Russia, and NATO, back into the spotlight.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s somoni currency fell against the dollar, media reported, continuing its general depreciation. Like other currencies across the region, the somoni has been under pressure because of a decline in the value of the Russian rouble. Kazakhstan devalued its tenge by 20% in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, APRIL 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In Kazakhstan’s former capital, the weekend is for parties but, it appears, not everybody is invited.
Down a side street, just off one of the main streets running through Almaty, a group of five or six young men wearing leather jackets smoked cigarettes and shouted insults at the men queuing to enter a gay bar on the opposite side of the road.
The insults grew louder and stronger. Nobody stepped in to stop the abuse.
Being homosexual in Kazakhstan is far from easy. The Soviet legacy of the punishment of buggery and the revival of the strong traditional values of the country’s macho nomadic heritage both play against homosexuality.
This, though, according to a gay rights activist in Almaty goes against the tradition of the city itself.
“Almaty has a history of more than 100 years of mild tolerance towards homosexuality,” the activist who preferred to stay anonymous said in hushed tones below chatter floating across a central Almaty coffee shop.
“During the Tsarist times, Panfilov Park (then Pushkin Park) was used as a pick-up place by Russian men. This was the most gay-friendly city in the whole of Central Asia.”
But now momentum across the former Soviet Union, led by Moscow, has triggered a raft of legislation against homosexuality. Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament has been holding an ongoing debate on just how to repress homosexuality in society.
A university professor in Almaty described the impact. “There are several professionals who conceal their sexual orientation in the workplace,” he said. Almaty’s former reputation as a tolerant city appears broken.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Joining the Russia-led Customs Union is the right thing for Kyrgyzstan, the country’s new PM, Djoomart Otorbayev, said in an interview with the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Mr Otorbayev’s statement is important as it underlines Kyrgyzstan’s drive to join the Customs Union.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev attended a summit for the heads of state of the Customs Union (CU) in Minsk. The summit acted as a show of support for Russia which is facing sanctions on officials after the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea last month. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are CU members.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen state-controlled media has declined to broadcast news about the turmoil in Ukraine, the eurasianet.org website reported. Turkmenistan is one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The authorities want to avoid arousing anti-government sentiment in Turkmenistan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)