Of all the ‘practice’ wars that preceded the main events of the second world war, including the Spanish civil war and the winter war between Finland and the Soviet Union, the least well known is the four-month war on the Mongolia-Manchurian border between the Soviet Union and Japan that ended in September 1939.

This is not surprising, perhaps, because British attention was (and still is) more focused on Hitler’s invasion of Poland that took place two weeks earlier. Even the participants downplay the importance of a war that took place in a remote corner of Mongolia. Japan refers to it as the Nomonhan Incident while Russia calls it the Battle of Khalkin Gol after the river that runs through the region.

Britain is not famed for its geopolitical interest in Mongolia. But the fate of this country as well as Siberia did briefly occupy the minds of our diplomats, politicians and soldiers from the end of the first world war. Strangely this short war, fought across a river some 6,000 miles from Great Britain would have a significant impact on Britain in the second world war.

But first some background. After Genghis Khan had established a Mongol Empire in 1206, Mongolia briefly ruled the world’s most powerful country, China. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China in 1271 and the Yuan dynasty (the first non-Han dynasty) ruled an empire that consisted of Mongolia, Korea and southern Siberia. Just shy of 100 years later, in 1368, the Yuan dynasty was overthrown by peasant born Zhu Yanzhang who founded the Ming dynasty. Thereafter Mongolia slunk into somnolent decline. In the 19th century Mongolia was absorbed into the Chinese Empire of the Manchurian Qing dynasty which ruled it as a vassal state.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century Mongolia was sucked into the vortex of global geopolitical instability that featured the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by Sun Yat Sen’s revolution in 1911, the fall of the Russian Imperial family, the Romanovs, in 1917, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, and the collapse of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922.

It is one of the ‘what-ifs’ of history how things might have turned out if Japan had won their 1939 border war in Mongolia. If Japan had decided to focus on the conquest of Mongolia and Siberia rather than China, would the US have ever entered the second world war?

In the chaos, Mongolia launched its bid for freedom. In 1911 a Buddhist theocratic state was established under Bogd Khan, the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutuktu (Holy Precious Master), who ruled a country where one in three men were monks – Mongolia had been proselytised by the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism in the 16th century. For the next decade Mongolia slipped in an out of independence during the Zhili-Fengtian wars of the northern warlords and their international backers, which included not only Russia but also Japan, Britain, and America.

The White Russian-Bolshevik wars featured a dubious cast of military chancers, including Nikolai Robert Maximillian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg otherwise known as the ‘Mad Baron’. Born from a family of German aristocrats, he claimed descent from Gengis Khan and dreamt of rebuilding the Mongol empire. To further his ambitions, he entered a dynastic marriage with a Manchurian princess. The Mad Baron, a ferocious bully, antisemite, sadist, mystic and drunkard, was nevertheless a brilliant horseman and cavalry officer. Above all he was known as a fanatical anti-communist who believed, not without reason, that, ‘we are not fighting a political party but a sect of murderers of all contemporary spiritual culture.’

The Mad Baron led a White Russian force determined to restore the Romanovs. First in 1921 he led a White Russian-Mongolian force that restored Bogd Khan to the leadership of an independent Mongolia. For his efforts, Baron Ungern-Sternberg is still commemorated in Mongolia as well as by conservatives in his native Estonia.

However, the Mad Baron’s success was short lived. In August 1921, he was defeated while supporting anti-Soviet forces in Siberia. Captured by the Bolsheviks, he was tried and put in front of a firing squad. Thereafter Bogd Khan ruled under Bolshevik ‘protection’. When this last Jebtsundamba Khutuktu died of cancer – or more likely poisoning – in 1924, he was not replaced. The Soviets consolidated their grip over Mongolia with the establishment of a Communist Mongolian People’s Republic.

The Soviets, both in Mongolia and Siberia, were helped by the withdrawal of the pro-White Russian Siberian expeditionary army that comprised Japanese, American, British, Italian, French, Belgium, Polish, Serb, Rumanian, and Chinese forces, which had landed in Vladivostok in August 1918 to engage the Bolsheviks. Their objectives were hopelessly divided by their nations’ conflicting operational parameters. The western forces had been primarily interested in ‘rescuing’ the Czech legion that was fighting its way out of Russia, and in preventing war material getting into the hands of the yet to be defeated German army. In addition, some, like Churchill, supported an ani-communist crusade.

Meanwhile Japan’s main interest in Mongolia and Siberia, emphasised by its provision of a 72,000 strong force, was to prevent the resurrection of Russian/Soviet power in the region after the collapse of Romanov rule. In this they failed. White Russian resistance to the Bolsheviks crumbled and in 1922 Japan was the last foreign power to withdraw its army.

That did not end Japan’s interest in Mongolia and Siberia. As in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Japan feared growing Soviet power in the east. Its renewed energy under the Bolsheviks was a prospect of grave geopolitical concern. It should be remembered that fear of western expansionism, particularly that of the United States, was the driving force behind the Japanese revolution that inspired the overthrow of the Shogunate in 1869, the so-called Meiji Restoration. Japan’s new government was determined not become a colony or a vassal to a foreign power; in 1939 the Soviet Union seemed a greater threat than the United States.

The geopolitical significance of the Soviet Union’s annexation of Mongolia was most keenly felt by Japan’s Kwantung Army in Korea which had won the right to control the South Manchurian Railway zone after the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Later it was fear of the Soviet Union that was the key reason for Japan’s annexation of the whole of Manchuria in 1931 and their subsequent invasion of northern China. With some degree of logic, Japan’s leaders began to fear that unless it took control of a weak Chinese state, the Soviet Union would fill the power vacuum. By 1939 therefore, it was not Chinese and Mongolians troops, but mainly Japanese and Soviet forces, that glared at each other across the borders of Siberia, Mongolia and Manchuria.

Relations had been testy for a while. In 1932 Japan had rejected a Soviet offer of a non-aggression pact. Over the next four years there were over 400 border incidents between the countries. More serious clashes took place in 1937 and in 1938 the Soviets lost 96 tanks and 792 troops at the Battle of Changkufeng (or Lake Khasan). It was a clear Japanese victory. Japanese foreign minister, Sadao Araki went as far as to suggest that, ‘if the Soviets do not cease to annoy us, I shall have to purge Siberia as one cleans a room of flies.’

The following year, in May 1939, following a seemingly innocuous incursion by Mongol horsemen across the Khalkin Gol river, full scale war broke out on the Mongolian-Manchurian border. The Nomonhan Incident/Battle of Khalkin Gol war was a classic border demarcation dispute fought over a worthless piece of land. This time the tables were turned on Japan. In June the arrival of the brilliant tank commander General Georgy Zhukov (of Battle of Stalingrad fame) led to a 500-tank attack which swept back Japanese troops that had crossed the river. As Zhukov noted, ‘Our trump cards were the armoured divisions.’ In aggregate the war cost some 50,000 casualties.

Japanese tanks proved to be no match for Zhukov’s fast-moving BT-7 tanks. Curiously the core technology for the BT-7 and its immediate successor the T-34 was provided by American racing driver, John Walter Christie. Born at River Edge, New Jersey in 1865, George Christie trained as an engineer but first found fame as a racing driver with a revolutionary front wheel driven car that he had designed. In 1905 he became the first American to drive in the French Grand Prix.

After a brief flirtation building fire engines, American engagement in the first world war encouraged Christie to design military vehicles. From 1916 to 1942 Christie designed tanks but never succeeded in selling more than a handful of sample models to the US Army. It was a failure for which the US Ordnance Department would later be much criticised. Christie’s key technological breakthrough came with the development of the M1928 tank, which its inventor believed to be a decade ahead of its time. Its unique suspension system enabled it to travel at 28 mph compared to the 9.9 mph of America’s existing first world war tanks.

Despite the strong backing of General George Patton, who would become America’s most famed tank commander, the US Army failed to capitalise on Christie’s developments. As a US congressman told Patton: ‘This is a wonderful tank, George, no doubt the best I’ve ever seen. But we aren’t about to buy it, you know that. I doubt we would even if it drove up the steps of Capitol Hill full of votes. We just can’t spend money on it.’

Indeed on the eve of the second world war, the American army, with fewer than 100,000 combat troops was smaller than those of Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. As Henry Stimson, US Secretary of Defence noted:

‘We did not have enough [gun] powder in the whole United States to last the men we now have fighting overseas for anything like a day’s fighting, and what is worse we did not have…the plants or facilities to make it; they had all been destroyed after the last war.’

Foreign governments were not so lackadaisical about rearmament in the 1930s. Christie’s designs were snapped by Britain for the Cruiser tank which was widely used in the early years of the war in North Africa. More importantly a visiting Soviet delegation spotted the brilliance of Christie’s innovations and purchased two sample tanks, spare parts and technical rights and patents for US $164,000. They were smuggled out of America as a consignment of tractor parts.

On taking Christie’s designs back to the Soviet Union, manufacture of its T-18 tanks was shut down and production of the BT-7, using Christie’s innovations, was done in volumeat the Soviet’s biggest track factory in Kharkov (Ukraine). The experience of this the Soviet-Japanese border war in 1939, with lessons learned from the design flaws that became apparent in the BT-7, led to the development of the famed T-34 of which 84,000 would be built. The T-34 would eventually be used by 39 countries in 23 wars, invasions, and coups.

Most significantly on the eastern front in 1941, it was the T-34 which blunted Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia. Hitler, who had previously declared, ‘We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down’. He would later admit, ‘If I had known about the T-34, I would have delayed invading Russia’. Along with ‘General Winter’, the Christie inspired T-34 was arguably the most important weapon in Russia’s defeat of Germany in the second world war.

A T-34 Soviet tank in Berlin’s Tiergarten district (Getty)

If the development of the T-34 was an important consequence of the Mongolian-Siberian border war in 1939, the geopolitical results were even more consequential. Defeat in Mongolia quashed Japan’s appetite for ‘striking north’ – a priority for powerful sections of the Japanese Army in the 1930s. Led to a large extent by officers trained in Manchuria, the Japanese Army saw the Soviets as its prime enemy.

By contrast the Navy saw Japan’s future battleground as the Pacific Ocean with their prime enemy being the United States. It is one of the ‘what-ifs’ of history how things might have turned out if Japan had won their 1939 border war in Mongolia. If Japan had decided to focus on the conquest of Mongolia and Siberia rather than China, would the US have ever entered the second world war? After all American participation in the second world war was precipitated not in Europe but in Asia. It was Japan’s failure to accede to US demands to withdraw from China that led the US to cut Japan off from international financial as well as the oil production of Standard Oil of California, at that time the world’s biggest producer.

A very real consequence of the Russo-Japanese War in Mongolia and Manchuria in 1939 was that it led in due course to their April 1941 Neutrality Pact that would enable Stalin to concentrate his forces against Germany. This was no mean advantage. Allies benefitted enormously from Russia not having to split its forces between an eastern and western front.

But there were disadvantages that ensued from Japan’s defeat to Russia in the Mongolian border war. The Japanese defeat heightened the complacency of British forces in Singapore and Malaya. If Bolshevik Russia could knock over Japan, surely it would be a breeze for British troops to defeat Emperor Hirohito’s forces? When Japanese forces invaded Malaya (some 40 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor) the British expectation was that they would be quickly rolled back.

Unlock unlimited access, free for a month

then subscribe from as little as £1 a week after that

SUBSCRIBE

Churchill had been sure that Japan would not dare to attack the British Empire. Asked by a young British officer as he was sailing back from America after meeting Roosevelt, whether Japan would attack, Churchill replied, ‘No I don’t think so. If they do, they’ll find they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.’ When news arrived in Singapore that the Japanese troop transports had arrived off Kota Baru, Governor Sir Thomas Shenton replied to Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival (who would later surrender Singapore to Japan’s Imperial Army commanded by General Tomoyuki Yamashita), ‘Well, I suppose you’ll shove the little men off.’

A British resident at the time, Maisie Prout, summed up the zeitgeist of Britain’s Asian colonies thus:

‘We were so sure that the British forces would mop up the Japanese in no time…According to British propaganda, the Japanese were all bow-legged and squinty eyed and they all had very bad teeth… They would be annihilated before they reached Kuala Lumpur.’

It was a complacency regarding Japan’s military capabilities that similarly afflicted the United States forces in Hawaii and the Philippines. Thus, the little-known Mongolian-Manchurian war of 1939 was broadly consequential in both the nature and outcome of the second world war both on the eastern front and in Asia and the Pacific. Furthermore, this obscure border war is another reminder, if one were needed, that the second world war was as much an Asian war as a European war.

WRITTEN BY

Francis Pike

Francis Pike is a historian and author of Hirohito’s War, The Pacific War 1941-1945 and Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II.

The Mongolian central bank's monetary policy council has decided to keep the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 13 percent, the Bank of Mongolia said Saturday.

The decision was made "given the current and future state of the economy and financial markets, external and internal uncertainties or risks to the economy, and the slow pace of inflation towards the target level," Byadran Lkhagvasuren, governor of the Bank of Mongolia, told the media.

In mid-December last year, the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate from 12 to 13 percent to stabilize the rate of inflation in the medium term, maintain the relative return of the Mongolian national currency, the Tugrik, and ensure both an internal and external balance of the economy.

According to the central bank, Mongolia's inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, rose 10 percent year-on-year in August.

The country aims to reduce its inflation rate to a single digit by the end of this year, the central bank said.

Frozen water isn’t nearly as flat as you might imagine, which becomes an issue when you’re crossing 160km of it on a bicycle. Around me, huge, fractured slabs of Lake Khovsgol, in its solid seasonal form, rear up in jagged stacks, like the ruined battlements of some frost king’s fortress.

Hauling the bike across the most manageable heap, I squint through my balaclava slot at a vast white world, very distantly bound by spindly forests and unclimbed, snow-veined mountains. The frigid desolation is giddying and the silence profound, until the lashes of my left eye freeze together and I break it with a panicky yelp.

Khovsgol is Mongolia’s largest lake by volume and one of the oldest bodies of fresh water on earth, created by tectonic activity more than 2mn years ago. Tucked up by the Russian border near big sister Baikal, it lies in the loneliest corner of a far-flung nation. Getting there from Ulaanbaatar, home to half of Mongolia’s 3mn people and its only international airport, proves a useful preparatory bonding experience for our 30-strong party of participants and crew: a 13-hour minibus convoy, on road surfaces that rack up 12,400 steps on my fitness watch.

It is late February, and the drive is a showcase for Mongolia’s bleak grandeur, an enormity of largely treeless hillsides, stippled with snow, beige grass and the full spectrum of livestock, from yak to camel. There are few settlements: outside the capital, most families still lead semi-nomadic lives, herding animals and pitching gers. It’s not quite a timeless existence. Every household in Mongolia appears to own a Toyota Prius, imported second-hand from Japan, and will merrily employ it to round up their sheep.

Eighteen of us have signed up for the Mongol 100 — a billing derived from Khovsgol’s length in miles — pledging to traverse the frozen lake “by any means necessary”. The event is one of 30 that will be staged this year by a company called Rat Race, most of which combine the thrill of adventure travel with the focus of a tangible physical challenge. The company grew out of the “adventure racing” scene that was developing in the 1990s: long-distance competitions contested by mixed teams, usually in wilderness settings, and typically involving a combination of running, cycling, kayaking, orienteering and perhaps swimming or climbing.

In 2003, sitting in a tent on the Peruvian mountain Alpamayo, 23-year old British climber Jim Mee came up with the idea of the “Rat Race Urban Adventure”, which would bring adventure racing to cities, with events staged over the course of a weekend, thus making it far more accessible to those tied down by jobs and families. Soon, hundreds of enthusiastic teams were abseiling down buildings and orienteering through parks in Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester, but the company gradually migrated back into the countryside and then, in a pivot adopted even more enthusiastically post-Covid, towards “bucket-list” international adventures. Next year 11,150 people are expected to take part in 40 events that range from running across the Namib desert to a cycle traverse of the Andes. Though the objectives might seem outlandish, most are achievable in a week’s annual leave — Mee calls them “extraordinary adventures for regular folks”.

Our four days on the ice in Mongolia are bookended by two at the start for preparation and two afterwards for recovery. By the time we hit the hard stuff at Khankh, a medieval scatter of wood, canvas and yaks up at the lake’s northern tip, I’ve established that everybody else has chosen their own feet as the necessary means, in two cases with ice skates attached.

Supplied by the organisers, my ride is a fat bike with chunky, nail-studded tyres. It’s my debut on one of these two-wheeled tractors, which proves surprisingly nimble as I thrum noisily along Khankh’s foreshore towards the jaunty little start banner. Glimmering in the dawn sun, Khovsgol stretches endlessly away before us. It’s -12C, and we’re thickly layered in fur and fleece. Breath steams through snoods and balaclavas; our cleated shoe coverings puncture the ice with bubble-wrap pops as we stamp warmth into our feet. A cowbell is rung with vigour, and with a muffled cheer and a chorus of grating swishes, we head out across the ice.

I spend those first hours unlearning many of cycling’s most basic common-sense principles. Instead of avoiding the ominous patches of mirrored black-green ice, I gravitate towards them: on these tyres, the smoother the surface, the better the grip. You also need to go faster when you want to go slower, ironing out slips and wobbles that at low speeds can pitch you over. Yet you must do so with only the gentlest inputs from your hands and feet. Press too eagerly on the pedals and the back wheel slides round to say hello; the front says goodbye with anything more than the tiniest twitch of the handlebars. The do’s and don’ts of braking: don’t brake.

If you don’t like freeze-dried food and can’t handle eight days without a shower, this is not the trip for you.

Yet even a slow and nervous cyclist will outpace any pedestrian, and after a very ginger start, I apologetically reel in the field. Ahead of the walkers are a pair of very determined runners; ahead of them are the two skaters. Both power across the ice with a graceful composure that defies their inexperience. One had prepared with no more than a couple of laps around his local rink in the Midlands. The other had just put on skates for the first time in his life.

Such were my remarkable fellow participants: a mix of ages, genders and backgrounds, brought together by a shared passion for gung-ho, spartan adventure. If you aren’t up for a pretty hefty physical challenge, don’t like freeze-dried pouch food and can’t handle eight days without a shower, this is not the trip for you.

Our minibuses have gone on ahead, erecting red kite banners to plot our course, and setting up pit stops where we’re plied with calories, hot fluid and encouragement. An hour or so beyond the second of these, I spot a huddle of tall white cones among the snow-wigged shoreline pines, each sprouting a neat coil of woodsmoke. A welcome volley of whoops and cowbells confirms I’ve reached our tepee camp. Time and distance seem governed by different rules on the ice, thwarting all attempts to gauge progress across a feature-free void. It feels as if I’ve been out there for 10 hours and covered 100km; in fact it’s four and 40.

Beer in hand, I sit by my tepee’s stove, pull up the canvas door flap and watch the rest of the field run, jog and shuffle in under a setting sun. Bringing up the rear is our winsome broom wagon, a horse-drawn wooden sled with a couple of weary stragglers on board. Ahead lies an evening of freeze-dried fireside feasting, beneath a profusion of stars. Vodka-wise, there’s a balance to be struck: enough to take the edge off those close-quarter snuffles in your five-person tepee, not so much that you spend half the night trooping to and from a demarcated hole in the cold, black woods.

The Mongolians in our support crew are a perennial astonishment: erecting and dismantling our nightly camps at fast-forward speed; knocking up an epic fire from huge lengths of tree, then bunging a Soviet-era pressure cooker on it, abrim with reindeer stew. They wear extravagant fur-lined robes and hats, but never gloves, not while securing our water supply by chain-sawing a hole in the ice, nor while manually repositioning the red-hot woodburner in my tepee. At first they seem bemused by our mission, by the fact that people from very far away would spend a lot of money to wobble and blunder across this most hostile of environments. But we win them round with our sheer indefatigability, plus a few rounds of campfire vodka and a go on my bike.

The days begin in shuddering cold, filling our bottles with smoke-flavoured lake water boiled up on the breakfast fire. On some mornings the ice seems alarmingly fragile, fracturing under my front wheel with a reedy tinkle as little cracks shoot jaggedly away in all directions. Scarier still are the distant artillery booms that thunder out as the ice rears up and shatters, bullied to breaking point by compressive temperature shifts or the currents that surge beneath it. The smaller catastrophes leave the white plain decorously strewn with a million glinting shards, as if someone had dropped a chandelier from an airship. The more brutal have me dragging the bike through mile-long quarries of frozen rubble.

There are mesmerising sections of deep, dark emerald ice shot through with veins, like transparent marble or a shattered-windscreen hall of mirrors. I judder over flash-frozen ripples and wavelets, and cratered moonscapes clumped with wind-sculpted Henry Moore snowmen. My hanky freezes to cardboard; my phone periodically dies of cold. There are no daydreams on this journey, no moments of mind-wandering distraction. For every single second of every single day you are thrillingly, viscerally aware that you’re in outer Mongolia, crossing an enormous frozen lake.

Of course, there are times when the glacial isolation gets to me. I linger at the pit stops, havens of sweet blueberry tea and human contact, and begin to envy the walkers and runners, who coalesce into chatty, pace-matched pairs or trios. My social routine becomes weirdly binary: I’m either smothered with company, crammed together under canvas or round a heap of blazing pine trunks, or the only man alive on God’s frozen earth.

“The days begin in shuddering cold and the ice seems alarmingly fragile, fracturing under my front wheel”

On the second day a bullying sidewind knocks me over a few times, and I’m beaten to the finish by one of the power runners. The day after, our route overlaps with an unofficial ice road and we encounter the occasional slithering Prius. One afternoon, beside a little pine-clustered hump of an island in the middle of the lake, we arrive to find our tepees pitched on the ice. A pre-dinner doze is cut short by an apocalyptic shuddering boom that segues into a symphony of whiplash cracks, muffled aquatic slooshes and ethereal rustles.

Parting tepee flaps we see our Mongolians staring doubtfully into a jagged fissure that has ripped the ice asunder a few metres offshore. It transpires this wasn’t a standard glacial event but an earthquake, which we later find notched 4.8 on the Richter scale. With parts of Khovsgol already beginning to thaw — it is usually frozen from November to April — this news doesn’t ensure a perfect night’s sleep. The next morning we awake to find the wood burner, solicitously fed by the crew through the night, has liquefied our tepee floor.

On the final day, the trail-finding lead minibus encounters patches of open water and our route is redrafted on the hoof. Khovsgol narrows as we approach the town of Hatgal, where an annual ice festival is in full swing, luring giggly pedestrians and pirouetting novice drivers out on to the frozen water. After all that deserted wilderness, the clamour is almost overwhelming. Just past a jetty where summer ferries and derelict cargo hulks stand entombed in the ice, I am politely accosted by a family who are intrigued by my bike, prodding its bulbous, armoured tyres with ungloved fingers. They all want a quick spin, and several selfies. The Mongol 100 finish banner is already in sight, and a belated bunching of the field means I cross it three abreast with a runner and one of our skaters, amid a cacophony of whoops and cowbells.

Achievement comes mixed with relief, and a dose of regret as we watch the balance of our expeditionary force stride, slide and stumble over the line. That’s the trouble with any shared endeavour, particularly when it’s played out in a slightly terrifying wilderness. It’s as if I’ve just been through a very intensive and hugely over-engineered team-building challenge with people I’d never previously met, but now can’t imagine ever being apart from.

Details

Tim Moore was a guest of Rat Race (ratrace.com). Entry to the Mongol 100 costs $4,750, including accommodation, guides, vehicle support, all meals and transfers but not flights. The next Mongol 100 events start on February 25, 2024 and March 2, 2025.

The Prime Minister of Mongolia Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai tasked to start the EPC-04 Package Work of the Oil Refinery and commission the plant in 2027. The Government of Mongolia pursues the policy of intensifying the construction of the Oil Refinery. The Premier instructed to make up for the 13 months of work lost during the Covid-19, start the EPC-04 Package Work of the Oil Refinery, and intensify the work to put the plant into operation in 2027.

In 2016, the General Loan Agreement of USD 1 Billion was signed between the Government of Mongolia and the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of the Republic of India. According to the Feasibility Study released at that time, it was concluded that the "Oil Refinery Construction Project" requires funding equivalent to USD 1 billion 236 million. Therefore, a loan agreement was signed in October 2019 to settle additional funding of USD 236 million from the Government of Mongolia.

The principal repayment of the loan was scheduled to be paid annually in the amount of USD 64.5 million starting from February 2023. However, as of February 2023, USD 112 million was taken out of the USD 1 billion loan. Therefore, a proposal to change the repayment schedule of the loan, which had been used to a minor extent, was made to the Indian side, sub-loan agreements have been signed on August 17, 2023, and the repayment has been postponed. The sub-loan agreement reduces the principal repayment of the loan from USD 64.5 million to USD 13.1 million. In addition, the period of exemption from the principal payment of 789.0 million US dollars, which is the financing of EPC-02 and EPC-03 Package Works, has been extended for another seven years.

With this agreement, the implementation of the four Package Works of "Oil Refinery Construction Project" that were regulated by one contract, which were dependent on each other and delayed, can be separated, thus enabling to intensify implementation of the Package Works.

Currently, EPC-04 Package Works, namely the construction and equipment works of the main plant, are pending. "Mongolian Oil Refinery" has announced that the budgeted cost of EPC-04 Package of USD 236 million will be increased by USD 422.0 million during the bidding process, making it a total of USD 648 million.

The Government of Mongolia confirmed the loan agreement for the initial cost of USD 236 million, and submitted a request for financing to the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of India in order to quickly start the work on the three facilities that will require the longest period of work in the EPC-04 Package: hydrocracking, sulfur separation facility, and hydrogen plant.

The visiting Mongolian Minister of Justice and Home Affairs made the above remark when meeting Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Ha Noi on September 12.

The host leader said that amidst the rapid, complicated and unpredictable situation in the region and the world, the two countries should work closely together to enhance the efficiency of the bilateral cooperation.

He suggested the two countries continue increasing delegation exchanges, spurring security-defense cooperation, enhancing their roles over issues of common interest, including maintaining peace, stability and development in the region and the world, and strengthening cooperation in economy, trade, and investment.

The Prime Minister also suggested the two sides re-negotiate an air transport agreement, and expand the Viet Nam-China-Mongolia railway route, while promoting people-to-people exchanges and tourism cooperation.

Khishgee Nyambaatar briefed his host on the outcomes of his earlier talks with Vietnamese Gen. To Lam, Minister of Public Security, during which the two sides signed a number of cooperation agreements in criminal prevention and combat, especially trans-national crime.

Uranium is officially in a bull market with a 20% rise in price so far in 2023, vastly outperforming other metals markets.

Uranium scaled $60 per pound on Friday for the first time since 2011. The breakthrough for the nuclear fuel after a decade in the doldrums coincided with the last day of the World Nuclear Symposium in London.

The World Nuclear Association’s biennial report provides long and medium term projections and insights into the more obscure corners of the global supply chain.

The report has little to worry uranium bulls, the ranks of which has grown large in the past couple of years, as the role nuclear could play in the green energy transition becomes obvious even to long term critics of the renewable source.

The nuclear option

The WNA report predicts world reactor requirements for uranium to surge to almost 130,000 tonnes (~285 million pounds) in 2040. That’s up from an estimate of 65,650 tonnes in 2023.

Under the World Nuclear Association upper forecast that total rise to 184,300 tonnes and even its most pessimistic forecast – 87,000 tonnes in 2040 – translates to a healthy rise in demand for the commodity.

From the current 391 gigawatts electricity of operable nuclear plants, the WNA now projects capacity will reach 686 GW by 2040 under its base case scenario. It’s a hefty increase of 71 GW from the organisation’s estimates in its the 2021 report.

Uranium price makes fresh decade high as forecasts grow rosier

The bulk of new generating capacity will be located in China which is aggressively pursuing nuclear energy to replace coal which supplies the bulk of the country’s energy needs currently. The country has 23 reactors under construction, 23 planned and a further 168 proposed to add to its current operating fleet of 53 reactors. Worldwide 436 reactors are currently in operation and another 59 under construction.

Overall demand projections from the WNA have increased in the last update, with 4.1% CAGR demand growth expected through 2040, from 3.1% in its 2021 report.

SMR

The role small modular reactors can play in stoking demand has kept uranium watchers excited for decades, but now the promised spike in demand from these technologies are finally set to have a meaningful impact. Russia is a leader in the field with two floating SMR reactors entering commercial operation in 2020 and China is expected to turn the switch on a land-based reactor in 2025.

A significant portion of the WNA’s upward growth adjustments can be attributed to the accelerated adoption of SMRs and the body believes installed capacity will reach 31 GW by 2040.

In a note BMO Capital Markets says the WNA’s forecasts for SMRs appear to conservative considering the potential of the technology’s use in everything from shipping to data centres.

The investment bank’s own forecasts point to 58GW of installed SMR capacity by the end of the next decade or around a tenth of nuclear generation capacity which is in line with the upper band of the WNA’s predictions.

Remote chances

BMO sees SMR boosting mining companies plans around decarbonisation of operations many of which are located in remote areas far from power grids. Many mines have replaced diesel generators with renewable sources like solar power, but for that you need ample space and the right climate:

“For others, particularly in colder climates such as Canada, we do see potential for micro-scale nuclear power solutions.

Uranium price makes fresh decade high as forecasts grow rosier

“Indeed, in much the same way as platinum producers are championing hydrogen-based trucks by installing them at their operations, we see an opportunity where uranium miners could potentially be pioneers in the use of SMRs.”

BMO believes remote mine sites have the best potential for SMR installations after marine freight and steelmaking.

Security and secondary supply

The report was likely already at the printers when the coup in Niger grabbed newspaper headlines but the WNA does point to “geopolitical instability, notably resulting from the Russia-Ukraine” resulting in increased interest in nuclear power for energy security and sovereignty.”

“The same instability has had significant implications for the globalized market for nuclear fuel cycle services, with utilities, suppliers and governments in North America and Europe pursuing opportunities to diversify supplies,” the WNA says.

WNA believes in the near term, secondary supplies of uranium will continue to play a role in bridging the gap between supply and demand as it has for more than three decades. But there is good news for miners longer term and the WNA acknowledges in its report the need for new greenfield uranium projects.

“However, secondary supply is projected to have a gradually diminishing role in the world market, decreasing from the current level in supplying 11-14% of reactor uranium requirements to 4-11% in 2050.“

Secondary supplies include among others reprocessed nuclear fuel, down blending of highly enriched uranium in nuclear weapons, tailing re-enrichment and stockpiles from oversupply between 1950–1970 BMO explains. BMO estimates roughly 3.7 years’ worth of reactor requirements are currently held as inventory.

Foreign Minister of Mongolia Battsetseg Batmunkh, who is on an Official Visit to the Commonwealth of Australia, held official talks with the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia Penelope Ying-Yen Wong on September 13, 2023.

Recognizing the solemn celebration of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Mongolia and the Commonwealth of Australia in 2022, the Foreign Ministers assessed the current state of relations and cooperation between the two countries. They expressed their contentment with the active expansion and development of cooperation in political, defense, mining, education, and humanitarian sectors and strengthening of people-to-people ties under the "Extended Partnership" over the past 50 years.

The Parties acknowledged the need to elevate bilateral relations to a comprehensive partnership by fostering relations and cooperation between Mongolia and Australia, based on the scope and potential of the cooperation. Moreover, the Ministers agreed to enhance the frequency of high and highest-level visits and political dialogue between the two countries.

Foreign Minister Battsetseg emphasized the ample opportunities for advancing trade, investment, and economic ties while expanding cooperation in agriculture, culture, and tourism sectors between Mongolia and Australia. Furthermore, she expressed Mongolia's intention to closely cooperate in establishing Agreements on Air Transport and Social Protection as part of strengthening the legal framework.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed her confidence that the Official Visit of the Foreign Minister of Mongolia to Australia would play a vital role in further developing relations and cooperation between the two countries. She also expressed her satisfaction that relations between Mongolia and the Commonwealth of Australia are deepening within the framework of the United Nations and other international organizations. Foreign Minister Penny Wong noted the commitment of Australia to strengthening cooperation with Mongolia in various fields, including gender equality and climate change.

The Parties underlined that the Australia Awards Scholarship is making concrete contributions to Mongolia's social and economic development and the capacity building of its human resources. The Foreign Ministers also noted that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Australia Awards Program in Mongolia, during which more than 700 Mongolians have received the scholarship and the parties agreed to increase the number of awardees starting this year. Noting the successful implementation of the "Work and Holiday" Visa Program, the Foreign Ministers affirmed their mutual commitment to expanding the Visa Program to include more citizens from both countries.

The Mongolian side expressed gratitude to the Australian side for providing AUD 250,000 in humanitarian assistance in response to the adverse humanitarian situation caused by severe flooding in Mongolia. Australia channeled its assistance through the Mongolian Red Cross Society.

During the Mongolian Foreign Minister’s Official Visit to Australia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Mongolia and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) of the Commonwealth of Australia signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. The two sides consider the Memorandum of Cooperation as significant in mutual consultations on international and regional issues, exchanging and involving diplomats from Mongolia and Australia in training, and enhancing cooperation between the MFA and the DFAT.

Following the meeting, Foreign Minister B. Battsetseg met with Mongolian students studying in Australia under the Australia Awards Scholarship.

At its regular session on September 13, 2023, the Cabinet approved the Open Skies Agreement between the Governments of Mongolia and the US which was signed by the two sides during the Official Visit of the Prime Minister of Mongolia Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai to the United States of America.

As the Government announced 2023-2025 as the Years to Visit Mongolia, the Ministry of Road and Transport Development set a goal of expanding air transport relations, rapidly increasing flight routes and frequencies in a short period of time, and plans to conclude air transport agreements with about 10 new countries in 2023-2024.

The preparation for the Open Skies Agreement with the United States had been intensified, the draft agreement was discussed and supported at the meeting of the Government on December 07, 2022, and during the Official Visit of the Prime Minister of Mongolia to the United States, the agreement was signed on August 4, 2023. The establishment of the legal foundation for direct flights between the two countries through the Open Skies Agreement opens opportunities for increasing the cash inflow, improving the competitiveness of national air carriers and expanding the air transport relationships and flight network, in addition to enabling the passengers to have pleasant travel at a low cost.

The International Conference "Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue 2023: Energy Security" started yesterday in Seoul, South Korea.

In his opening speech the 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon said that due to climate change, up to 70 percent of the world's population and animals face the risk of extinction. The average global air temperature has increased by 2.1 degrees, and it is not possible to predict this trend by 2050. Therefore, introduction of an improved carbon neutralization technology has become a priority.

Participating as the keynote speaker of the Conference, the Chairman of the State Great Khural of Mongolia G. Zandanshatar underlined that the main principle of energy security is the combination of energy sustainability and reliable supply of energy that meets our present and future demands. This concept is the basis for ensuring economic growth, social progress and ecological sustainability. The Speaker said that at the time of climate change, geopolitical tension and increasing demand for energy facing the global community, the meaning of the concept of energy security is ever broadening.

Mongolia is determined to expand cooperation in the fields of mineral resources, energy, transport logistics network, and supply of goods to the third market. The parties will closely work together to strengthen relevant legal environments. Through diversification of our energy sources, we will become resilient against supply shortages and price fluctuations. Research and analysis to determine the appropriateness of new energy sources and technologies such as nuclear, natural gas, methane gas, and hydrogen will be intensified. To this end, whilst looking for all opportunities to intensify cooperation in these sectors, the goal of transitioning to green technology is put forward as a priority, concluded the Speaker.

The participants of the Conference held discussions on the topics of International Mapping of Energy Security, Geopolitics and Energy Sustainability, Promoting Energy Security in Asia and the Pacific through Clean Energy Solutions, Clean Energy and Cooperation. Former MP, Director of External Affairs at Green Climate Fund (GCF) S. Oyun and former MP, President of Mitchell Foundation for Arts and Sciences A. Undraa contributed as panelists.

Today the panel discussions are held on the topics: Energy Efficient Technology Solutions, Energy Security, Political Economy of Renewable Energy and Energy Security, Environment and Energy Security: Dialogue with the Future, Education and Energy Security: Dialogue with the Future, Equality and Energy Security: Dialogue with the Future.

Over 160 representatives from seven countries are participating in the International Conference "Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue 2023: Energy Security", reports the Media and Public Relations Department of the State Great Khural.

In an era of Instagram tourism, some young people are searching for less curated travel experiences. So they’re flocking to the open spaces of this East Asian nation.

It was near midnight, in a storm, on a dirt road in the middle of Mongolia. Still, the river seemed manageable.

My cousin Cole Paullin and I were searching for a place to camp, and I was exhausted from a long day of fording streams in our rented four-by-four truck.

“Seems fine,” I said. “Go for it.”

Cole accelerated and the front tires plunged off an unseen embankment, slamming onto the rocks below. We were perched at a precarious angle, and the front half of the truck was submerged. Water intruded through a crack in the door, lapping onto my feet. I imagined our rental deposit draining downstream.

Drawn by the noise, two young men came over from a nearby tent camp. One waded toward the car into the waist-deep water with a message typed on Google Translate: “This is dangerous.” I was too embarrassed to be scared.

I lent him my rain jacket as he made some calls. Thankfully, there was cellular service. Within an hour, a man with a truck and a tow strap arrived. We reversed at full speed while he accelerated, extricating us from the river.

“That was Disneyland, dude,” said Cole, 27, channeling the slang of his native Los Angeles. “What a ride.”

Cole and I live on different continents — he’s in Philadelphia and I’m in London — but once a year, we convene somewhere new for an outdoors trip. This year, we decided to take a weeklong drive across Mongolia.

Over the past decade, millennials like me — those born between roughly 1981 and 1996 — have been seeking out remote places like Mongolia, while other tourists crowd Santorini, the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum. It may be a reaction to a world that’s increasingly condensed into our phones, where the same few destinations pop up again and again on Instagram grids and travel blogs. What we have gained in accessibility, we have lost in serendipity.

The Mongolian government has been trying to capitalize on this desire for less curated travel. It has invested in a digital marketing campaign targeting people ages 23 to 40. It has also invited social media influencers to come to Mongolia and post videos of the country’s verdant valleys, Caribbean-blue lakes and orange sand dunes. According to a 2019 survey cited by Mongolia’s tourism ministry, 49 percent of visitors to the country were under 40.

Tour operators are catering to this growing interest, helping young people see the Golden Eagle Festival, an annual gathering of nomadic hunters — male and female — and their eagles; join the Mongol Rally, a driving odyssey across Europe and Asia; or ride in the Mongol Derby, a roughly 600-mile horse race.

“The world is getting smaller, and everyone’s looking for the new frontier,” said Sangjay Choegyal, a 36-year-old living in Bali who has visited Mongolia eight times. “The next place is Mongolia.”

The writer’s rented UAZ pickup truck with a rooftop tent on what is considered a good road near the town of Orgil.

A magnet for adventure seekers

When Cole and I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the capital, in late July, the line for foreign arrivals crowded the new immigration hall at the airport.

Olivia Hankel, a 25-year-old woman from Oregon, had come to train for the Mongol Derby. Willie Freimuth, a 28-year-old paleontology student from North Carolina, had returned for a second year to study fossils. And Mr. Choegyal had flown in with friends for a road trip to the Orkhon Valley, a lush expanse of central Mongolia.

“When you talk about a trip to Mongolia, it always fills up pretty quick,” Mr. Choegyal said.

Last year, Mongolia had nearly 250,000 visitors, more than six times as many as the year before, when the country was emerging from pandemic isolation. The majority of those visitors were from nearby countries, including Russia, South Korea and Kazakhstan. But the number of visitors from Europe and the United States rose more than 500 percent between 2021 and 2022.

“I think you can have a much more interesting, transformative and engaging experience in a Mongolian outhouse than you can at the Taj Mahal,” said Tom Morgan, the founder of the Adventurists, a company that hosts extreme trips in the country. And, he advised, “It’s better not to plan.”

Erdene Zuu, likely Mongolia’s oldest surviving Buddhist monastery, is nestled in the Orkhon Valley, where Genghis Khan chose to locate Karakorum, the capital of his empire, in 1220.

The eaves and roof of a temple structure viewed from below. The bottom eaves are red with blue and green beams. The middle section has blue cylinders with green crescents between them. The top section has green cylinders and crescents. At the top, there is an image of a golden wheel on a circular blue background.

One of the buildings at Erdene Zuu Monastery in Karakorum.

A tent with four tires

Cole and I hadn’t planned much. We arrived with only our backpacks and a rental car booking from Sixt — one we weren’t sure was real. Sixt’s Mongolian offices operate by bank transfer, and before we arrived, we had sent more than $2,000 to their account. I worried it could be a scam.

We were relieved when we arrived at Sixt and found it had our booking. Then we got the bad news: A previous group had wrecked the S.U.V. we had requested. A 3,000-mile trip on the country’s many dirt tracks had destroyed the bottom of the car. The agent offered us a Russian-made UAZ pickup truck equipped with a rooftop tent. It didn’t have a stereo and the air-conditioning was a faint stream of hot air, but it was sturdy.

We were lucky to get it. Sixt was almost fully booked — as were other providers in the city.

“We sold out three times this season. So we added more dates,” Max Muench, 31, a co-founder of the travel company Follow the Tracks, said. His company, which started running tours last year, helps clients book cars and gives them tablets loaded with maps they can use to navigate while offline. “Especially now after Covid, people want to feel a sense of freedom again,” he said. “And they’re looking for it in the vast emptiness of Mongolia.”

A section of the off-road drive between Orgil and Murun. Outside the capital, the Mongolian countryside is largely open and populated by nomads.

Nomads guided by Google Maps

We soon discovered what that emptiness looked like.

Roughly half of the country’s more than 3.2 million people live in the overcrowded capital, a tangle of roads and new high-rises fraying in every direction. But around a quarter of Mongolia remains nomadic, living on the edgeless steppe in gers, round tents made of wood, tarp, and animal skins or fabric. They move with their herds as many as four times a year.

As we drove out of the city, guided by Google Maps, the sky stretched so wide the horizon seemed to curve. A herd of horses gnawed at the grass, swishing their tails at flies. We were seeking out the herd’s distant relatives as we aimed the truck toward Hustai National Park, a refuge for what the Smithsonian calls the last truly wild horses left in the world.

After nearly an hour on a dirt road, we pulled up to a small, dusty entrance gate. I asked the national park manager, Batzaya Batchuluun, if visitors ever had a hard time finding the place. “Most people come with a guide. But young people like you are starting to show up on their own,” he said. “They have phones. They get here eventually.”

Mongolia is surprisingly connected. Despite the long stretches between villages, we got cellular internet service on much of our drive (using a Mongolian SIM card). One day as I was watching camels in the desert, I was even able to do something absurd: Try my luck with Ticketmaster for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets. (Like so many others, I was disappointed.)

Chuluut Gorge, just off a paved highway, is a popular stop for Mongolians on road trips across the country. Many visitors enjoy a picnic near the gorge before continuing to Terkhiin Tsagaan Lake.

The Mongolian government has been working to expand online access to citizens and tourists. An estimated 84 percent of the country has access to the internet, and gers often have solar panels, keeping each family’s cellphones charged. The government has also been working to pave the roads from Ulaanbaatar to popular destinations.

All that development has allowed young travelers to roam the country more freely, bringing a different kind of nomad to the steppe. The day after our visit to the wild horses, as we explored Genghis Khan’s ancient capital, Karakorum, we met a group of European women, friends from college on a two-week road trip. They, too, chose to eschew a guide and navigate with their phones.

“We didn’t want a trip where everything is organized for you,” Maria Galí Reniu, a 31-year-old from Spain, said. Hanna Winkler, a 30-year-old from Austria, chimed in: “On our own, we can just pull off anywhere we decide is a nice camp spot.”

Inside the home of a woman from the Tsaatan community, a group of reindeer herders who follow their animals across the steppe near Russian Siberia, moving with the seasons.

A horse race and a hailstorm

Cole and I also pulled off where we liked. At night, we camped under the Milky Way, arching bright above our rooftop tent. During the day, we made lunch in golden canola fields or next to winding rivers. In Elsen Tasarkhai, a long stretch of sand known as the mini-Gobi Desert, we rode two-humped Bactrian camels.

Halfway through our trip, I persuaded Cole to detour to Tsenkher hot springs, a popular destination for Mongolians. Nearly an hour down a dirt road, we came across a crowd of children, bobbing on horses. Drawing closer, we saw they had numbers pinned to their shirts.

One girl and 41 boys, ages 8 and up, gathered for a race. The families used their cars and motorcycles to herd the horses to the starting line. Parents smiled and motioned for us to follow as they lined up their cars next to the horses. When the horses took off, we did too, speeding across the grass alongside the racers at nearly 50 miles per hour.

A boy competing in a horse race during the Naadam Festival, which brings nomadic families together every summer for races, archery and wrestling competitions. Spectators driving in vehicles alongside the racers can reach 50 miles per hour.

Just as the first horse crossed the finish line, it began to hail. What would have been a celebration turned into an exodus. Some of the riders crossed the finish line and then headed straight into the hills, braving pellets of ice.

As we drove on toward the hot springs, torrential rain overpowered the windshield wipers, and we began to slide. We passed Priuses, a favorite car in Mongolia, mired on the roadsides. Each time we forded a swollen river, the water rose closer to the cab, until we got stuck and it finally leaked in.

The storm had also flooded the hot springs. As we shivered in a tepid pool, one English-speaking boy commiserated: “Sorry you missed the hot water.”

Erdenesukh Tserendash, who goes by the nickname Umbaa, with his horses above Khuvsgul Lake. The writer and her cousin stayed with Umbaa’s family and joined him on a full-day horse ride.

Along came a spider

After days of slow, off-road driving, we finally arrived at sparkling blue Khuvsgul Lake — our final destination. We wanted to spend the night in a ger, so we called Erdenesukh Tserendash, a 43-year-old horse herder who goes by the nickname Umbaa. His number was on Facebook.

Umbaa, his wife and two sons welcomed us into one of his family’s tents, lit by bulbs hooked to car batteries. For dinner, the family served boiled sheep and horse meat on a communal tray with carrots and potatoes. After dinner, they cracked open the bones and sucked out the marrow, and before bed, we sipped tea with yak milk. As I lay there scrolling, in the light of my phone, I noticed something on my face and swatted. It was a spider the size of a quarter.

The next day, Umbaa took us on a full-day horse ride. We cantered across meadows of wildflowers, saw reindeer and climbed a mountain overlooking the lake, lazing in the sun for lunch, an idyllic finale to our journey.

Back in Ulaanbaatar, the wildflowers seemed far away as I stood with the Sixt agent and worried about the truck. Was there any damage from getting stuck in the river? The truck was so covered in mud and dust, it was hard to tell.

I thought back to the wrecked S.U.V. we were originally supposed to rent and braced myself to lose our deposit, more than $1,400. The agent waved away my fears. Everything was fine, he said. Getting stuck was just standard driving in Mongolia.

His shift was over, so he offered us a ride to the airport. We thought we had plenty of time to make it, but the grinding traffic in Ulaanbaatar almost made us miss our flight. It was one last reminder that in Mongolia, little goes as planned.

BY: Lauren Jackson is a writer for The Morning newsletter, based in London.