Leading off… Tajikistan’s defense minister, Emomali Sobirzoda, traveled to Pakistan for talks November 12 with Pakistan’s top military officer, Gen.Sahir Shamshad Mirza.Readouts of the meeting didn’t delve into the specifics of the discussions, but it’s likely that Afghanistan topped the agenda.
The two generals “considered it important to further strengthen friendship and brotherhood in the context of the unstable situation in the region and the world,” according to one Tajik media report.
Several bouts of cross-border exchanges of gunfire between Tajik security troops and Taliban fighters have occurred in 2025, most recently in late October.Meanwhile, Pakistan has long been viewed as a sponsor of the Taliban, but of late bilateral relations have deteriorated.
Officials in Islamabad accuse the Taliban leadership in Kabul of backing Islamic militants active in border areas of Pakistan.During an over week-long bout of fighting in October, Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Kabul and other cities, reportedly targeting Pakistani Taliban militants.
Under a cease-fire agreement, the Taliban pledged to withhold support for militants operating in Pakistan.In case you missed it from the Caucasus… Armenia’s sovereign debt is ballooning, increasing by 80 percent since 2018, according to Finance Minister Vahe Hovhannisyan, who didn’t offer specific numbers.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has stated the reason for the rising debt is national security: Armenia needs to make new weapons’ procurements following the country’s decisive defeat in the Second Karabakh War.
Speaking in parliament, Hovhannisyan mentioned that while military expenditures have grown by 65 percent since 2018, so has spending in areas like social welfare (54 percent), education (60 percent) and economic stimulus measures (50 percent).
A member of the parliamentary opposition contended that the debt has actually more than doubled, rising from $6.77 billion in 2017 to $14.2 billion in September 2025.
Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev, speaking at the November 16 meeting of Central Asian heads of state in Tashkent, revealed that cargo traffic along the Middle Corridor trade network has increased 90 percent over the past three years.
He didn’t provide detailed figures.He also stated that the capacity for the rail route along TRIPP, a planned corridor connecting Azerbaijan proper with its Nakhchivan exclave via Armenian territory, will be 15 million tons annually.
TRIPP, or the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, is a central feature of the provisional peace pact signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington in August.Somewhat provocatively, Aliyev referred to TRIPP in his Tashkent speech as the Zangezur Corridor, a term that rankles many Armenians.
The authoritarian-minded Georgian Dream government in Tbilisi is effectively disenfranchising Georgians living abroad.The country’s nominal parliament speaker, Shalva Papuashvili, announced on November 17 that the country’s electoral code will undergo an overhaul, adding that the changes will eliminate polling stations abroad for expat Georgians.
Papuashvili billed the pending amendments as measures designed to “strengthen election resilience,” adding that the voting process has become “increasingly vulnerable to external interference.” If expat Georgians wish to vote, they will have to return to Georgia to cast a ballot on election day, Papuashvili said.
Georgian Dream is deeply unpopular within expat Georgian communities.In the disputed parliamentary elections in October 2024, which international monitoring groups deemed deeply flawed, Georgian Dream limited the polling sites available to expats.
Meanwhile across the Caspian… Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament on November 12 unanimously adopted a bill on “LGBTQ propaganda.” The bill now must win approval in the Kazakh Senate and secure a presidential signature before it becomes law. "We see that children and teenagers daily come across information on the Internet that can negatively affect their perception of family, morality and the future,” the bill’s sponsor, MP Amanat Elnur Beisenbaev, said.
Rights activists are assailing the law.A statement issued by Human Rights Watch, said the bill not only contains wording that would constitute a “fundamental” violation of human rights, but also can “increase the vulnerability” of members of LGBTQ community in Kazakhstan. “Discriminatory and rights-violating provisions like those being proposed have no place in any democratic society, which Kazakhstan aspires to be,” the HRW statement adds.
Russia is trying to lay the groundwork for a new Russian-language television channel in Kyrgyzstan.Russian journalists from Kremlin-aligned outlets, including RT, are quietly being recruited to work at the start-up news outlet, which is tentatively titled “Nomad.” According to a report published by RF/ERL, employees at the Russian state-controlled outlet Sputnik are overseeing the recruitment and preparations.
Sputnik representatives declined to comment to RFE/RL.Kyrgyzstan recently tightened its media law, requiring that at least 60 percent of all content broadcast by media outlets be in Kyrgyz.
Earlier in 2025, a Russian soft-power entity in Kyrgyzstan, Russia House, came under government scrutiny when an employee was arrested on suspicion of trying to illegally recruit Kyrgyz nationals to fight for Russia in Ukraine.
Turkmenistan’s chief news website has posted a story claiming that the country should be considered a digital leader.The Turkmenistan-Golden Age outlet cited Deputy Prime Minister Mammetkhan Chakyev as saying a variety of modernization projects are making progress, including “an e-Government system, and an expansion of capabilities of artificial intelligence and cloud technologies.” He provided no details, but touted the country’s “smart" city, dubbed Arkadag, as an innovation hub.
The digital improvements relate to the government’s “open door” policy designed to create “political, economic, and legal conditions” for “mutually beneficial interstate relations,” Chakyev said.Uzbekistan is buying a bunch of Boeing long-haul jets and has launched construction on what is to become Central Asia’s largest airport, but the national airline is barely breaking even.
The airline reported a tiny profit for the first nine months of the year, with interest payments and currency exchange rate fluctuations acting as drains on income.