The president may be deluded, but even he has come to realize that the crisis already upon his heavily energy exports-dependent economy is going to be very difficult to weather without help.
Instead of being transparent about the economic crisis, the president is, in the manner of an unaccountable manager incapable of long-term planning, trying to do the same with less.
While the government seems to concede the inevitability of the incipient downturn, it is still clinging to rosy economic performance figures. This and more in our weekly Turkmenistan briefing.
The vote went ahead in spite of the global coronavirus outbreak; although Abkhazia hasn’t recorded any cases, election officials took pains that the disease couldn’t be spread by voting.
Armenia went farther than most of Iran’s neighbors, closing its border for two weeks. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, was the only country to have not closed its border with Iran at all.
The hidden impact of coronavirus, a new secret police chief, and reading the government’s imagined data to understand its priorities and mindset. This and more in our weekly Turkmenistan briefing.