‘Billions of Trees Expo’ Running at Central Stadium www.montsame.mn

The “Billions of Trees Expo” was opened at the Central Stadium on April 25, as part of Mongolia’s state policy to protect forest resources, promote reforestation, and expand afforestation efforts.

The expo aims to increase public participation in the “Billions of Trees” national movement, initiated by President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa.

The opening ceremony was led by State Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Batbayar Shurenchuluun, who called on citizens to actively participate in the spring tree-planting campaign. He emphasized the importance of cooperation among the government, private sector, and citizens, noting that the national movement is a practical solution to combat desertification and land degradation while restoring ecosystems.

A total of 50 companies and organizations are participating in the expo, including 42 specializing in tree nurseries and 8 involved in fertilizers, soil, greenhouses, and equipment. Participants highlighted that the event serves as an important platform to strengthen cooperation and supply chains within the sector.

Visitors to the expo can purchase certified seedlings and saplings of 25 varieties of fruit trees and shrubs from reliable sources, as well as receive professional advice on planting and tree care.

The “Billions of Trees Expo” will run until May 15.

Plant-Based Product Exports Reach 183,500 Tonnes in One Year www.montsame.mn

Over the past 13 months, Mongolia exported 183,500 tonnes of plant-based products. Of these, 86% of exports went to China. Of the total exports, 75% were raw plant products, 24% were processed products, and 1% consisted of wood materials.  

Key exports include 100,800 tonnes of rapeseed, 23,700 tonnes of animal feed and grass, 27,900 tonnes of bran, and 10,800 tonnes of potatoes. Smaller amounts of sea buckthorn juice, carrot juice, and pine nuts were also exported.

Officials say plant-based exports are steadily growing, but the market is still heavily dependent on one country. This growth creates new opportunities for agriculture. Farmers can grow more types of crops, improve soil quality, and increase yields. As a result, agricultural productivity and economic benefits are expected to continue rising.

11.2 Million Livestock Have Given Birth Nationwide www.montsame.mn

According to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry, across Mongolia, 50.4% of the expected 22.4 million breeding animals have given birth. This means 11.2 million mother animals have delivered, and 11.1 million young animals have been successfully raised.

About 127,200 young animals were lost due to non-natural causes. The survival rate of newborn animals is 98.9%, which is the same as last year.

By region, livestock birthing rates are 50.4% in the western region, 53.7% in the eastern region, 48.1% in the central region, and 50.2% in the Khangai region.  

Since the beginning of the year, 212,100 animals have died from non-natural causes, accounting for 0.3% of the total livestock. This includes 182 camels, 17,700 horses, 23,800 cattle, 80,400 sheep, and 89,800 goats.

The highest losses were recorded in Uvurkhangai (77,600), Bulgan (21,000), Dundgobi (16,000), Selenge (12,500), and Uvs (11,900).  

Strong earthquake in Mongolia, magnitude 5.9 recorded on the Richter scale www.dailyausaf.com

Strong earthquake tremors have been felt in different parts of Mongolia, whose intensity has been recorded as 6.3 according to international media.

The news agency Reuters has confirmed that the earthquake caused the ground to shake, which spread panic among the citizens.

According to initial reports, the epicenter of the earthquake was at a depth of 10 kilometers, however, there were no immediate reports of any loss of life or property. The administration in the affected areas has been alerted and information is being collected to assess the damage.

Systemic corruption claims debated www.ubpost.mn

At the plenary session of the parliament, lawmakers held a highly charged debate under the theme “Corrupt Mongolia,” where the Democratic Party (DP) confronted Prime Minister N.Uchral over allegations of systemic corruption, governance failures, and major state projects. DP members argued that corruption has evolved into a structured and institutionalized system during the past decade of ruling party dominance, and they pressed Prime Minister N.Uchral who also serves as MPP chairman to acknowledge this assessment.

However, instead of a direct acceptance or denial, much of the debate developed into a combination of policy explanations, reform pledges, and political exchanges. DP parliamentary Caucus Chair O.Tsogtgerel opened the debate by directly asking whether Mongolia should be considered a corrupt country. The PM did not give a straightforward “yes” or “no” answer, instead describing corruption as “lost opportunities, unearned income, and unfulfilled aspirations of citizens.”

He introduced his government’s “Four Paths to Freedom” initiative, stating that combating corruption is a core national priority and requires structural reform rather than isolated enforcement actions. Furthermore, N.Uchral emphasized that corruption should not be framed as a partisan issue. He called it “the enemy of all Mongolians” and urged opposition lawmakers to join forces in addressing it. He invited O.Tsogtgerel and others to cooperate in anti-corruption efforts, stressing that no political party is free from the issue.

O.Tsogtgerel, in turn, said the DP is ready to support courageous reform efforts, but insisted that real action, not political rhetoric, is needed. When asked whether he would resign if cabinet members were found involved in corruption cases, the prime minister did not provide a direct answer. 

The MP continued to argue that Mongolia has shifted from a free-market economy to one dominated by state involvement and corruption-driven inefficiencies. He cited concerns over thousands of public tenders and ongoing criminal investigations related to procurement.

The PM responded that the government’s goal is to expand private sector participation and reduce state dominance in economic activity. He said that reforms will transfer many services to professional associations and reduce licensing burdens, with over 140 administrative services already being removed or simplified. He added that artificial intelligence and data-driven systems will increasingly be used in procurement and governance to reduce human interference and corruption risks.

MP S.Erdenebold questioned the ruling party’s internal accountability and asked whether political pressure was influencing anti-corruption actions. He referenced earlier party commitments to remove officials linked to wrongdoing. MP O.Shijir delivered a more critical intervention, stating that corruption, once measured in millions, has now escalated into trillions of tugrugs and even hundreds of millions of dollars. He argued that corruption exists primarily within institutions controlling public funds and procurement systems.

MP S.Byambasuren raised concerns about declining public trust, stating that citizens lose confidence when individuals previously associated with corruption cases are seen near government decision-making. He also directly accused the PM of involvement in the so-called small and medium fund scandal. N.Uchral rejected the allegation, stating that all his financial matters are transparent and that he has not benefited from such funds, adding that his family has always lived by honest work.

PM defends reforms and transparency agenda

Responding to criticism, Prime Minister N.Uchral said corruption cannot be reduced by targeting individuals alone. He stressed that systemic reform is necessary and highlighted ongoing digital governance initiatives. He pointed to expanded use of open data platforms, the “Glass Account” system, and E-Mongolia services, claiming that hundreds of datasets and thousands of records have been made publicly accessible to increase transparency. He also stated that classified state information should be significantly reduced, and that a draft law on public information secrecy is being prepared for parliamentary approval. According to him, reducing bureaucracy, digitizing services, and decentralizing authority are key strategies to limit corruption opportunities. MPs also raised questions about budget deficits, rising debt, and declining revenues. The premier acknowledged that the budget deficit had reached over 1.3 trillion MNT, driven by declines in corporate and personal income tax revenues.

He said the government is working on fiscal adjustments and macroeconomic coordination reforms. He also confirmed that fuel prices are expected to remain stable following agreements with Russia, and that no increase is planned in the near term.

He further noted that mortgage loan policy requires reform to better target beneficiaries, as more than 130,000 households have already accessed state-supported housing loans since 2013. Throughout the session, opposition MPs repeatedly challenged the prime minister on whether corruption is centrally managed within the ruling party and whether meaningful structural change is possible without political accountability.

N.Uchral rejected the claim that corruption is managed at the top level, instead arguing that reform must be continuous across institutions and political cycles. He emphasized that accountability mechanisms exist within party and legal structures, and that officials accused of wrongdoing are subject to disciplinary review. He also stated that he would not tolerate corruption regardless of political affiliation and urged MPs to work together beyond party lines. The parliamentary debate ended without consensus on whether Mongolia should be defined as a “corrupt country,” but it highlighted deep divisions between the ruling party and opposition over the scale, causes, and solutions to corruption.

While the DP pressed for direct acknowledgment of systemic failure, Prime Minister N.Uchral emphasized structural reforms, transparency initiatives, and digital governance as the long-term solution.

Fuel supply secured with Russia www.ubpost.mn

Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources G.Damdinnyam has briefed Prime Minister of Mongolia N.Uchral on the outcomes of his recent official visits to the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan, focusing on energy cooperation and fuel supply stability.

During the visit to Russia, Minister G.Damdinnyam held talks with senior officials responsible for the energy sector, including Russian Minister of Energy S.E.Tsivilev, Rosneft Director Igor Sechin, and Gazprom Neft Director A.Dyukov. He also delivered an official letter from Prime Minister N.Uchral to the Russian government and relevant authorities.

The discussions centered on addressing current fuel supply challenges and ensuring stable cooperation. As a result, both sides reached a preliminary agreement, with Russia expressing readiness to supply fuel at domestic market prices. The minister stated that this agreement will help stabilize fuel and petroleum prices, and no increase is expected in May.

In addition to the Russian talks, Mongolia also strengthened energy cooperation with Kazakhstan. The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding under which Kazakhstan has expressed its readiness to supply up to one million tons of crude oil annually to Mongolia. Officials view these agreements as an important step toward ensuring energy security and maintaining stable fuel supplies in the region.

Foreign nationals increasingly cited for visa violations in Mongolia www.gogo.mn

During the first four months of 2026, the Department of Foreign Citizens and Nationality investigated and processed 994 violations involving 2,340 individuals from 34 different countries. According to official reports, these cases involved various breaches of the Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens.

Under Article 16.2 of the Law on Violations, penalties are enforced against foreign citizens, stateless persons, and their local sponsors who fail to meet their legal obligations. Records indicate that the most frequent infractions involve the mismanagement of residence permits, including their possession, use, and storage, as well as overstaying visas and engaging in activities inconsistent with the declared purpose of stay.

A significant portion of these violations stems from negligence by inviting enterprises, organizations, and private citizens who failed to register documents or obtain necessary permits within the legally mandated timeframe. Specifically, authorities identified 238 foreign nationals whose sponsors failed to secure residence permits on time, while 606 individuals were found to have exceeded their residency limits. Additionally, 43 individuals were cited for overstaying their entry visas.

Demographic data reveals that the majority of violators are citizens of China and Vietnam, accounting for 1,506 (64.3%) and 252 (10.7%) individuals, respectively. Other countries represented in the report include Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Azerbaijan, Russia, South Korea, and France.

Chinese APT Abuses Multiple Cloud Tools to Spy on Mongolia www.darkreading.com

There's a newly discovered Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) out in the wild, and it's been targeting the government of Mongolia.

The group, "GopherWhisper," is only now being described in public, but it isn't actually new to the cyber threat landscape. Judging by internal chat logs, it's been variously active since November 2023.

GopherWhisper won't turn any heads with the sophistication of its attacks. It arguably distinguishes itself only in two respects: by using a gaggle of different backdoors, each of which leverages a different means of command-and-control (C2), and by its heavy focus in a country not often targeted by other cyber threat actors. Researchers at ESET found that it backdoored 12 systems inside of one Mongolian government institution, and evidence suggests that dozens more Mongolian victims may have been impacted too.

GopherWhisper's Backdoors
On Jan. 2, 2025, ESET researchers discovered two malware samples: a backdoor, "LaxGopher," and its injector, "JabGopher." One might reasonably expect, at that point, that they had a pretty good idea of how this threat actor was attacking its victims.

A few days later, though, through C2 data recovered from LaxGopher, they found a second backdoor, "CompactGopher." A few weeks after than, on Jan. 22, came yet another backdoor, "RatGopher." March 5 unearthed a fourth backdoor, "BoxOfFriends," and its loader, "FriendDelivery." And on March 24, there was "SSLORDoor."

Each of these backdoors distinguishes itself in small, technical ways, but the main difference is in what sort of means they use for C2. Each abuses some popular, mainstream cloud-hosted service to send and receive data to targeted machines. LaxGopher uses Slack, RatGopher uses Discord. BoxofFriends manages the same kinds of communications via email drafts in Microsoft Outlook. SSLORDoor doesn't abuse a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, and CompactGopher isn't technically a C2 tool, as it only manages file exfiltration via the public file-sharing service file.io.

It's unclear why GopherWhisper felt compelled to cook up five different versions of the same basic dish. Doing so might have allowed it to pivot more easily, if any one of its C2 methods were ever discovered or blocked. Perhaps it's also the case that, if you can't build an A-grade spy tool, having a bunch of C-grade options is good enough. 

"They are quite productive in the way that they are using a lot of different custom backdoors in a short amount of time," says ESET senior malware researcher Mathieu Tartare. But he qualifies that comment, adding, "I wouldn't say that this is a particularly sophisticated group." Compared with the many other backdoors these days that abuse popular cloud-based services, nothing about GopherWhisper's toolset stands out for being all that impressive.

More to the point, in a presentation at Botconf 2026, ESET malware researcher Eric Howard noted, "Their 'Downloads' directory contains some interesting file names, including 'How to write RATs,' which leads us to believe that these operators might be new to developing malware."

The Cyber Threat Landscape in Mongolia
Mongolia has the poor fortune of being sandwiched between two of the world's most capable cyber powers.

From Tartare's point of view, "In Mongolia we see mostly — I wouldn't say exclusively, but mostly — China-aligned groups targeting organizations. I would say it's necessarily like Ukraine with Russia, but they are quite heavily targeted [by one country]." Some higher-profile cases over time include a RedDelta campaign from 2023 to 2024, an unattributed COVID-related campaign in 2020, and an APT27 (aka Emissary Panda) campaign against a national data center a few years before that. Notably, all three of these campaigns were targeted at the government sector.

As reported by Mongolia's UB Post, however, Mongolian government data suggests that the overwhelming volume of malicious cyber activity in the country comes from Russia, with the US a distant second. Though APT attacks out of Russia are less frequent, in 2023 and 2024, Google researchers found the Russian threat actor APT29 (aka Midnight Blizzard) exploiting Mongolian government websites for watering hole attacks, infecting the devices of passersby with surveillanceware. This isn't to say that Mongolia has only two or three adversaries, either, as it's occasionally swept up in broader espionage campaigns across the Asian continent as well.

According to the National Security Council of Mongolia's Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS), an Ulaanbaatar-based government think tank, Mongolia in 2024 recorded 1.6 million total cyberattacks and cyber incidents, 13,061 of which involved cybercrimes, costing $25.4 million in damages. The government has been working in recent years to stem its problem, most notably through a 2021 law on cybersecurity and a National Cyber Security Strategy, approved in January 2023.

As one ISS author wrote last year, "Mongolia is trying to keep [up] on global trends of digitalization but our cybersecurity is weighed down by a plethora of challenges, which necessitates massive intervention to unburden. Mongolia has made strides, but cybersecurity threats know no borders."

By Contributing Writer

Nate Nelson is a journalist and scriptwriter. He writes for "Darknet Diaries" — the most popular podcast in cybersecurity — and co-created the former Top 20 tech podcast "Malicious Life."

How a sinking lithospheric root raised Mongolia's Hangay Mountains www.phys.org

Central Mongolia's Hangay Mountains rise more than four kilometers above sea level, forming a dramatic dome that shapes the region's climate. But for decades, geologists have been puzzled: What caused this massive mountain range to form so far from any active plate boundary? Unlike the linear Himalayas, which are still rising from the collision of India and Asia, the dome-shaped Hangay Mountains show little internal deformation, suggesting a different and previously unknown mechanism.

In a new study published in Geology, an international research team led by Professor Pengfei Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reports the first discovery of Cretaceous magmatism in the Hangay Mountains, allowing them to establish a spatial and temporal link between deep geodynamic processes and surface uplift. By analyzing the ages and geochemistry of newly discovered volcanic rocks, the team found that a dense piece of lithospheric mantle beneath the Hangay Mountains broke off and sank into the deeper mantle about 125–114 million years ago.

This "foundering" event triggered melting of the mantle, generated magma, and caused the overlying crust to dome upward, creating the dome-shaped Hangay Mountains we see today. Remarkably, this foundering happened after an ancient plate boundary bent into a giant U-shape—a process called oroclinal bending—which thickened the lithosphere at the most-curved part of that bend to facilitate the subsequent foundering.

The findings offer a new model for understanding how mountains can form in the middle of continents, far from plate boundaries. They also reveal a surprising link between deep Earth processes and surface landscapes: large-scale oroclinal bending can drive a lithospheric root to sink, which in turn triggers volcanism, builds topography, and even influences regional climate by creating rain shadows. This study opens fresh questions about how such "intracontinental" mountains may have shaped Earth's habitability over deep time, and it could help scientists better interpret similar mountain ranges elsewhere on our planet.

Mongolia agrees petroleum product supplies at domestic market prices with Russia www.interfax.com

Russia will not raise refinery gate prices for gasoline and diesel fuel exported to Mongolia, Mongolian government said on its website.

Mongolian Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Damdinnyam Gongor held talks with Russian officials on fuel supplies.

"He met with Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin and Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov. Following discussions on how to resolve the current situation, an agreement in principle was reached. Russia said it would supply fuel at domestic market prices. Minister Damdinnyam therefore announced that fuel and gasoline prices would not increase in May," the statement reads.

It was reported that the Mongolian authorities see a real threat to the country's fuel market and financial stability from the consequences of the military operation being conducted by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. Mongolia's economy, dependent on imports of petroleum products, will suffer from a global shock in the world market, which will trigger a fuel crisis that could last several months, according to the authorities.

At the end of March, it emerged that the Mongolian authorities had asked the government of Russia, which supplies 98% of all petroleum products to Mongolia, not to raise oil prices within the framework of bilateral trade, despite volatility in the global oil market. Mongolia forecasts that fuel prices on the domestic market could rise by up to 40% in the event of further increases in world prices.

Also, Mongolia and Kazakhstan have signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the oil and gas sector, and are studying the possibility of supplying at least 1 million tonnes of Kazakh oil to Mongolia.