ONSIGHT: KAZAKHSTAN / JUNE ‘23
Moments before passing through the gate at Kutaisi Airport, Ed said to me over an airport-free Wi-Fi interrupted WhatsApp call, “Who are you flying with?” I looked out over the runway, which the gate led directly onto, to see a lone plane. “Fly Arystan,” I replied. There was an artificial pause as the Wi-Fi dipped to one bar. And then, “Yep, thought so, never fucking heard of them.”
I, too, knew nothing of Kazakhstan. My knowledge was limited to really two principal ideas: the occasional touch-down astronaut video, where spacefaring folk would test their legs for the first time, often in the likes of the Kazakhstani desert, and, shamefully, Borat. A movie that I watched with my mother one summer and later learned wasn’t even filmed in Kazakhstan (it was Romania). It bears little to no resemblance to the people or place in question.
The flight was, on the whole, quite a hectic experience. Views of countries at war, severe turbulence, a constant waft of shit permeating the cabin, and finally, military-grade aerial manoeuvres above Aktau Airport, which forced my face into the window to look down on what is one of the most unusual ‘natural’ sights I have ever seen.
The lake beneath me was yellow. It looked a bit like laver or congealed salt… simultaneously presenting as both beautiful and revolting. I did not know at the time, but this was, in fact, Lake Koshkar-Ata, located in the Mangystau Region of southwest Kazakhstan. I think Wikipedia sums it up best when it states, ‘it is a serious environmental and health hazard.’ Aktau, known as Shevchenko during its days in the Soviet Union, was a uranium extraction and processing industry, only coming to a halt in 1999. Over the course of production, 356 million tonnes of toxic and radioactive mining waste were dumped from the Shevchenko chemical complex into the lake.
After waiting in a queue that felt like an eternity, and running through all the possible reasons why the Kazakh police wore such big hats, about twice, I breezed through the small airport and was swept into a taxi with five other people. All I knew was that it was heading to the city.
I didn’t have a place to stay, and the hostel options were limited: an abandoned place on the edge of town or a hostel-cum-hotel whose sign was refusing to illuminate the letter 'S'. After wandering about somewhat aimlessly for a while and smoking half a pack of Marlboro Reds, I settled on the Three Dolphins hotel, which seemed both affordable and, well, dolphin-themed. 10,000 Tenge later, I had my keycard. Sweaty, tired, and ready to be a lizard on the beach for the last few hours of sun, I weaved through the corridors of the hotel to find my room: 206. The room was dimly lit, the only light coming through a crack in the curtain, the faint smell of cigarettes lingering in the air—now remembering the receptionist explicitly saying, ‘no smoking in the room,’—and a ceiling fan that sent gentle but visible pulses through the walls. I lay on the bed and closed my eyes for a moment. The room tone was far from ambient. Squinting, I looked up at the agitated fan, anxiously reminding me of its presence. As I glanced around the room, it was then, and only then, did I notice the huge and quite aggressive, photorealistic wallpaper of three dolphins swimming towards me. Not at all the 'send me to sleep' atmosphere you’d desire while alone in a hotel. At least it was on brand.
I meandered through the provincial streets, through the wearisome Soviet blocks, past monuments of war, distressed and self-conscious. Momentarily wishing on the dappled light of my summertime London. Feeling alone. Moving down past the flowers, the graffiti and the feral cats. Witnessing leaders imprinted on homes, like branded cattle. I was descending into fiction, a moment when travel suspends you in disbelief. Not because this reality isn’t real, but that it’s not yours, yours to take, or even be part of. You are here to witness, with judgement-free eyes. Oh yes, and you may judge, as we all do, but no one will care or hear you, so you are left suspended in travel, in your privilege, in your learning. And there, in the mix of it all, was a SpongeBob SquarePants-themed Krusty Krab restaurant, which, much to the annoyance of my nine-year-old self, was closed. To be honest, the boarded windows indicated that Nickelodeon and the franchise owners had no intention of opening up the joint anytime soon, or that the Kazakhstani people had not warmed to a show about a sponge.
I reached the beach and clambered up the rocks of Skal’naya Tropa, passing a police outpost and a small concrete jetty, where I sat and watched a group of local lads diving into the water, secretly trying to photograph the occasion. As I pointed my iPhone towards the men, trying to capture a dive mid-air, one of the group, who was fully clothed, wearing a blue Ralph Lauren polo and Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, showed their discontent by signalling an X with his hands. I darted my line of sight in the other direction, hoping it was enough to avoid a potential conflict, and in doing so set my gaze upon another man, sat on a rock about 50 yards in front of me. He watched me, watching him, chewing slowly on sunflower seeds, intermittently spitting bits of shell onto the ground. He smiled and beckoned me over.
David was not his name, but it’s the closest we have here, and I’ll explain why. Immediately, as we shook hands, the wistful British quality of not listening to anything but an anglicised name properly peaked its head, and I did not just forget the name he told me, I failed to listen. I did, however, remember/understand one other word in his short greeting: Uzbekistan. He picked up my cigarette packet and signalled if he could take the last one. Noticing it had Arabic writing on, he curiously pointed at me and said, "Arabia?" I smiled and replied, "Angletere," as if French would help the situation. It did, "Anglere, Anglere," he said, followed by something something "Uzbek," pointing to himself in the process. We sat in silence, smiling at each other and occasionally giving each other a thumbs up—once after he pointed at the sun, and once when I pointed at the water. As well as feeling more autistic than ever (I have Asperger's), there was a beautiful simplicity in our communication. It was pure, like a child learning to speak, but also with the hint of what it feels like to talk to a new lover. Maybe trying to gauge them a little, thinking about every word.
He pointed at me and said, "the dead Queen." Now, this is really where my cultural awareness showed as beyond lacklustre. I pointed at him and said… Nothing, literally nothing would come to mind, and I could feel the essence of time passing, feeling the start, middle, and end of every second, in minute detail. He raised the sunflower seeds, extending them towards me, hoping to break the trance. As he spoke in Russian, and I spoke back in English, guessing the content of each other’s sentences, he poured the remains of water from my bottle and filled half of his already opened beer into it, chucking the bag of seeds in the space between us. I started eating the seeds. They were potentially the most pointless food source I’d come across, and the shell to body ratio was so monumentally big, I seriously questioned if it were worth the effort to even open it. "Mark Twain," he shouted. "Mark Twain." I threw the seed carcass next to the cadaver of a fish that he'd just finished eating. "Anglere, Anglere." "Ah, yes," I said. "William Wallace." "Yes," I said. "Garry Potter." I internally laughed. "Yes, Harry." The game went on for hours, featuring Christopher Columbus, Harry and Meghan, and curiously, Zinedine Zidane (singled to me with the iconic head-butt impression). "David Beckham," I said. Mr Bean was mentioned at least a handful of times. I’d escaped not knowing any famous Uzbeks.
We proceeded to drink sun-baked plastic-bottled beer, feast on seeds, and list off famous English, albeit mostly actually British, icons. As the conversation and sun started to wane, he paused, and pointed at his chest, tapping on his heart, almost like a pulse. "David Beckham," he said. I really wanted to know what he meant, but our language barrier, and I have to say his handwriting (he did actually give me his family landline in Uzbekistan), prevented us from ever taking our newly found friendship to the next level. Maybe I had just shared a moment with Uzbekistan’s greatest footballing talent from this generation. I guess I’ll never know.
For dinner, I had a beer, a bottle of water, and a horse steak. In Kazakhstan, horse and beef are considered high-end meats. As I chewed on Black Beauty, I messaged Mikael, a local Russian who had offered to drive me into the desert the following day. As an ex-Soviet state, the demographics of the region are primarily made up of two peoples: Kazakhs and Russians. It seemed at that moment in time, and for the rest of the trip for that matter, that I was the only person of another nationality here.
The walk home from the restaurant assured me of this fact. I stood lost in the suburbs of Aktau, illuminating myself, like a hopeless white beacon, with Google Maps. Only the distant barking of dogs and the faint cackling from the shadows reminded me that this absence I was feeling was temporary, and that even though the spooky disembodied sounds were making me feel like I was about to be abducted, it was more likely than not just my own feelings of displacement that were scaring me. I located myself with a failing map (you know when you can’t zoom in or out because you then lose the image of the map?) and knew that in order to get back, I needed to go via the Khorosheye Zavedeniye Karaoke Bar. As I walked, I started to hear the faint thud of a bass speaker. ‘Duh, duh, duh, duh,’ it went. Louder and louder. I got closer and rounded the corner. Against the backdrop of the dark sky, advertisements, and rubble, a stretch Hummer nestled itself between the buildings.
The stretch Hummer, well, let’s call it a limo of sorts, was definitely a complex image—which I liked. So I stood and photographed it. In this setting, and maybe all settings these days, the limo becomes both a symbol of status, but also a relic of the past. A bygone era of wealth, money, and power. There was no one in it, no one near it, but the lights shone full beam against the beige walls, a faint reminder of the brown and grey hues of socialist realism. The engine purred like a needy cat. It was eerie to be stood there in the absence of presence, in a city that itself was a relic of a Soviet past. I got a sense of a place, holding onto something troubled—like a lost, yet abusive partner.
The following morning, Mikael picked me up sometime just before 7 am, in his 4x4. I had just checked out of the Three Dolphins hotel and had basically deep-throated my coffee moments before this small but stacked Russian man, so sure in his masculinity, greeted me with a big smile, “привет Сэм / Privet Sem.”
Before I knew it, we were hurtling down the highway, casually passing my phone back and forth, attempting to use Google Translate at 160 km/h. It served us well, and after carefully navigating any potential hot topics, like ongoing wars, politics, oligarchs, and football, we kept in the friend zone of conversation. It was, however, immediately apparent that we would not remain in the fringes of niceties, and he was keen to understand my views on Russia and why I was in Kazakhstan.
The first stop was the Karagiye Depression, which momentarily made any of my own feelings somewhat small in comparison. Mikael got out his calculator app, input -134, and pointed to the vast open space beneath us. The Great Depression, as it’s known, is 134 metres below sea level and is the lowest point not only in Kazakhstan, but the entire former Soviet Union and Central Asia. We didn’t have long here as we had 700 km to cover, and the car engine, which Mikael never seemed to turn off, was calling.
We continued through small towns, oil fields, past cemeteries and nuclear power plants. All the while, house music blasted from the speakers of the 4x4. 4/4 in a 4x4, I thought somewhat moronically to myself. Mikael interrupted my stupidity and told me that his grandparents had moved to Kazakhstan in 1971. The only thing I knew of this time in the Soviet Union was the Indo-Soviet treaty that saw India align with the Union during the Cold War, causing the USA a huge political headache. In fact, Mikael's grandparents had been adding to Western anxieties as they had moved for the uranium industry. “Like the power plants?” I nodded. “No, no, this wasn’t for power,” he smiled. “It was for weapons.”
Mikael smoked like the horse I’d eaten the night before, swapping between cigarettes and vaping, giving me flashbacks of labels reading may cause impotence. If this were true, his libido must have been rock bottom, and for a man who looked so muscular, I really hoped he wasn’t adding steroids to the mix, for his sake. Clouding the 4x4 with vape, watermelon ice, maximum nicotine, and the sun beaming through the windows created the illusion that, at that current moment, I was sitting in a 21st-century steam room, flying down the highway into the desert of Kazakhstan.
I cut through the smoke with Google Translate, robotically making up for my own impotence. “I suppose the USA were really scared of what the Russians were doing in Kazakhstan back then.” Suddenly realising that this could be a contentious comment, I paused. He turned to me, smiling, squeezing my leg, and with an elongated grin that seemed to stretch further than the Depression we’d just seen, said, ‘Yes, they were.’
After a stop at Tiramisu Valley (yes, it looks like Tiramisu), and another viewpoint, I was finding the constant house music a bit much and thought about asking him to change it. But I decided not to say anything because there’s already a war on. As I gazed through the tinted window, I noticed that on the side of the road there were wrecked cars mounted on poles. I whipped out Google Translate, my trusty aide (I feel steed may not be appropriate here), and asked the big question. His response was as if the land were doing a medieval role play with heads on sticks. It turns out that these were speed awareness signs, reminding drivers of the perils of excess.
And then, just like that, Google Translate stopped working. We sat silently, thinking separately in our differences, probably about those differences, for another two hours. Every time I thought about the possibility of awkwardness, it was as if Mikael could sense the situation and would increase the volume by one or two notches, drowning out our lack of Duolingo practice with ‘So, no I don’t want your number’, a house remix of No Scrubs by TLC.
We arrived at a roadside viewpoint, where, to my amazement, another 4x4, but significantly less equipped, pulled up. Out got my Russian counterpart, who was also with a Russian guide, who either was new to the job or seemed significantly underprepared for a desert outing. Camping furniture was unfolded, a gas canister ignited, and a spread of four types of meat revealed. The meal was exclusively for carnivores. As I was about to tuck in, the Russians started pouring water over each other's hands, washing them as if we were in a hospital ward and surgery was about to commence. It turned out that the way Mikael ate the chicken was, in fact, a bit like surgery, managing to remove every millimetre of flesh, skin, and gristle with his teeth from the bone. Impressive. Now it was my turn to have my hands washed. I squatted, letting Nikolai soak me with water. Returning the favour, we swapped places. As I went to pour the water, he stopped me, grabbed the canister, and took a massive gulp, holding the water in his mouth like a pelican. He then proceeded to squat and squirt the water from his mouth over his hands, and in broken English, mouth dripping, said, ‘this is the Russian way’. I seriously hope I never have to have surgery in Russia.
The rest of the day was spent at Bozzhyra, the geological formation that is honoured on Kazakhstani banknotes. Their options were limited by the very notion of a desert offering little in terms of clear signs and signifiers of a country, at least clear enough to be framed on currency. I looked towards the formation, Turkmenistan looming afar, grey skies overhead, and a camera roll heavy with pictures. Despite often being caused by man’s destruction—the toxic waste, the oily Caspian Sea (a result of Shell’s careless operations), the miles of drilling and mining—the landscape of Kazakhstan was undoubtedly otherworldly, and to be stood where I was, with no one around me, no Google Street View, no supermarkets or petrol stations, no pressures of idealistic Western standards, was, in all senses of the word, sublime. The journey back to Aktau was a hallucinogenic road trip, dipping in and out of sleep like the Kutaisi Airport free Wi-Fi. Trying not to show Mikael I was tired due to a weird Russian masculinity complex that I had progressively developed over the day.
It was approaching the end of my first 24 hours, and I was tired. The sun set over the Caspian Sea, which is actually the world’s largest lake, like a literal oil painting, naturally concluding the day in the most stereotypical but undeniably beautiful way possible. The warm tungsten tone dancing with the surface oil. Van Gogh, eat your heart out material. I walked the streets, dreaming about aisles of horse-laden fridge-freezers, Mikael’s wink-laden comments on ‘how nice Russian women are’, and a day laden with Martian landscapes, camels, hunting nests, desert towns, and more meat to feed three Russians and a Brit in the desert. Just occasionally being grounded by my own feet, pacing through shadows and sunlight, intermittently reminding me that my tan did not extend to the roof of my feet, as I’d been wearing trainers all day.
I walked through the park, via the Escheri and Military Aircraft monuments, symbols of the country’s complex historical roots, and along the Kamennyy Mostik seafront boulevard, past the ‘I LOVE AKTAU’ sign. What a weird modern semiotic that is, having crept its way into almost every city on earth, and which to most, communicates the exact opposite emotion of love—probably disdain. Subsiding into my own superciliousness, watching children swing at synthetic bubbles, yapping lap dogs, and bartering street vendors. By no means was the boulevard busy, but it was the most people I had seen in one place since arriving in Kazakhstan. A welcome sight. The energy and pace of this place was different; Kazakhstan is unique because it is simultaneously quite an uptight place (as I would soon reaffirm), but also slow-moving, and maybe sometimes even relaxed.
Realising I had ventured further from the centre than expected, I slumped into a coffee shop and wondered whether the flat white would be a risk or reward. Maybe I should get a cappuccino? Was it going to be horse milk? As I debated the ratios of milk to coffee in my head, a woman came to the counter and promptly ordered. For a moment we did not interact, but there was an immediate tension between us. After finally ordering my coffee—an Americano, by the way—and politely navigating myself to the peripheries of the room, we spoke.
Over the next few minutes, waiting for the coffee to be ground and the milk to steam, I learnt of her life. How she was a French national who had uprooted and left for Kazakhstan with her then-husband, having a child in a Kazakhstani hospital, her love for language, non-Western culture and ideals, her interest in healing and esotericism, and the betrayal her family felt when she told them she would not be coming back. Her English was good, but limited. I could sense from her face that this frustrated her; there was so much to be said. We stepped outside the coffee shop and, to my surprise, the aforementioned baby was parked in a pram, waiting for her. I have to say I massively reassessed the danger I had felt on the night of the stretch Hummer. It was actually quite pathetic that a limo with fairy lights, playing 50 Cent’s ‘Candy Shop’, had spiralled me into a Stalinist nightmare. I think I may have overreacted. ‘My name is Cindy, would you like to get dinner?’
We went to Tongal House, bought one large margarita pizza, and sat outside. From underneath the pram, Cindy got a bowl of cherries, plonking them onto the table and removing the cellophane. ‘So you’re into magic?’ I said, having ruminated over her earlier comment on the esoteric. ‘Yes, I’m a…’ Cindy stumbled over her words, ‘O… Or… Oncle’. ‘Uncle?’ I replied. ‘No, like a witch.’ Cindy was a French oracle living in Kazakhstan and had just offered to read my palm. With a baby in one hand, and mine in the other, she traced the heart line, the head line, and the life line of my palm one at a time. There is actually a fourth line, the fate line, which only some people have. Turns out my fate line is quite faint, but it’s there. Cindy traced the contours of my palm, following and inspecting the intersecting lines to see if they were curved, sloping, wavy, or separated. She let go and went silent. Cindy thought for a moment before saying, ‘Too complicated.’ Great, I’m complicated even to a palm reader. She opened Google Translate and spoke into it, waited, and then turned her screen to face me. This is what it said:
You love discovering the world through your experiences, you are looking for yourself. I can’t see if you're going to settle down because I always see movement and changes in your life.
I can’t remember what I responded exactly. Probably something shrouded in the warm cloak of self-denial, but maybe also a little ego, as ultimately this was quite a reaffirming reading. She spoke into Google Translate and turned her phone screen once more:
I see of course you are right but once out of the box you meet other people who are also out of the box. You are going to meet a woman who will surprise you and teach you a lot of things, don't worry.
At this point, I couldn’t tell if Cindy and I had actually started flirting. Was she the woman my palm was calling for, this single mum in Kazakhstan? I did not want to take the risk. After exchanging WhatsApp details—because, well, you never know when you might need your palm read—we promptly shared a few more niceties, some smiles, and left with a hug.
es, to no surprise to either myself or the reader here, I did check back in to the Three Dolphins and promptly showered, shaved, inspected the small haemorrhoid that had developed in parallel with the aforementioned masculinity complex, and lay on the bed. It had come full circle. There I was, alone… wait, let me rephrase. There we were, the four of us together again, in that cigarette-stained room, amidst the fading light of Kazakhstan.
That should have been a lovely ending to Kazakhstan, but alas it wasn’t. My days in Aktau had drawn to a close. I packed my bags and said my final goodbyes to the Three Dolphins Hotel. I took a few snaps of the room, the meerkat ornament in the hallway, and the model galleon in the restaurant, making my way to the lobby where my Uber awaited.
I jumped into the back of the car and, to my surprise, was greeted by two people in the front. It’s not often that you have a navigator, but if it was going to get me to the airport on time, then why the hell not. The driver turned and looked over his shoulder at me. ‘You don’t mind if my wife joins me?’ ‘Not at all,’ I remarked. In hindsight, it would have been best if I’d said no there and then, told him it was me or her, or got out of the cab and ordered another Uber. First, we stopped for fuel, then at a supermarket, and finally at an unknown location along the seafront where I think they just temporarily got out of the car for a light argument, presumably to spare me the embarrassment and preserve their five-star rating – not that by this point it was anywhere near intact. Turns out, this was their regular setup, a husband-and-wife driving duo.
We finally pulled into Aktau International Airport, and I shut the door, not just of the Uber, but to the idea of ever working with a spouse. Despite the tour of suburbia I’d just had, there was a minute for me to take a breather, inhale some fumes, and reflect on what had really been a great adventure. I stood outside the terminal building and lit a cigarette, enjoying the night’s mild air. A handful of people pulled up in cars, scurrying about with bags and passports, printed travel documentation in plastic wallets – still very much present in the landscape of Kazakhstani airports, and for all over 50s, for that matter. I watched the departing folk, took one deep last breath of my cigarette, looked to the sky, and thanked Kazakhstan for having me. With that, I flicked my cigarette into the gutter and walked towards the glass doors of the terminal building.
As I went to open the door, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and a young man, not dissimilar in age to myself, spoke to me. I did not understand, and in a somewhat confused state, thinking he probably wanted money (spoiler, he did), I turned to continue into the terminal. Again, he grabbed my shoulder, this time firmer, sure in his touch. I turned to see the man holding a police badge low near his waist, revealing his handcuffs and not firmly holding my forearm. In one swift motion, my rucksack was swung off my shoulder by another man who had come up behind me, and my wrists had been placed behind my back. Within a few clicks, I was handcuffed.
The plain-clothed police officers walked me through the terminal, past my check-in desk and gate, past all the other passengers on the flight I was about to board, and to the far end of the building where the on-site police station was located. They sat me at the desk and shut the door, releasing my hands so that I could provide them with my passport and travel information. Again, Google Translate came into play, and it became apparent that I had been arrested for flicking my cigarette butt into the gutter. It seemed pretty steep that I might be on my way to a gulag in a country that actively dumps toxic waste into their lakes. The police officer then stated, ‘Do you not respect our country? Would you do that in yours?’ A bit of advice here: never say what I then said in this situation, which was, ‘Yes’. Sadly, yes was the truth, and like many people who’ve ever smoked know, cigarette butts are casually disregarded everywhere in Britain. We should change this bad habit, but I was about to sentence myself right then.
The officers were angered by my comment, to the point that one of them got up and paced the room, as if I’d told him something extremely hard to comprehend. My heart was beating so fast I felt sick, genuinely processing the possibility of spending a night in a Kazakhstani cell. The officer browsed the stamps in my passport (my Israeli paper still slotted in there, which thankfully wasn’t seen), asking me about each one. ‘Bulgaria, Moldova, South Africa, why were you there?’ he wondered. Maybe I just projected the next bit onto them, but I really felt for a moment that they were accusing me of spying, and that maybe this was the reason I was actually in Kazakhstan. Maybe these sleuths wanted a pay rise? He tapped on the desk, demanding my phone, and went straight into my pictures. The other officer joined him for the viewing, and they browsed the contents of my camera roll. There was a pause. They looked up at me and said, ‘Open hidden.’ They turned my phone to me so that my Face ID unlocked the folder. I was really impressed that Face ID was capable of reading a face that was so full of fear, dread, embarrassment, and self-loathing that it was hardly recognisable. In slow motion, the folder unlocked.
When I said earlier, ‘taking pictures of the room,’ I may have also meant a couple of revealing pictures of me in the Three Dolphins Hotel that I had sent to my girlfriend. She had also sent me some, and by some, I mean quite a few, which I had also saved to the folder. From across the table, I watched the two of them swipe through the photos, smiling like schoolboys, most likely at my severe tan lines, semi-serious face, and semi… well let’s not go there. They handed my phone back to me, and like a dog that had just done a poo on the living room floor, I tucked my tail between my legs and looked down at the table. They slid a notice in front of me and asked me to read and sign. In my distress, I attempted to read the entire document, despite it being in a language that I could not even distinguish the letters of. I signed, and looked up. ‘Now you pay.’
They walked me through the terminal building to a cash machine where I withdrew a relatively meagre 50,000 Tenge. The fine for littering at the airport. About £95 at the time of writing. Back at the desk, they counted the money and handed me my passport, reminding me of how lucky I was to be not strung up in some basement cell. I was impressed that I had managed to withdraw money and receive my documents back with handcuffs on. There was one final surprise: this was my official warning, essentially strike one of two, and they explained to me that if I committed another crime, no matter how small, I would be banned from entering the ‘Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’ for life. There sure were some cultural learnings there.
I was escorted, still in handcuffs, past security, past immigration, and to my flight, which was already nearly fully boarded. At the entrance to the plane, the officer released my wrists and said, ‘Have a safe flight.’ ‘Thanks for a nice evening,’ I replied. Every passenger on the full Airbus A320neo had their eyes on me as I walked the aisle to my seat. I sat down and immediately texted my girlfriend, ‘I’m sorry.’
*Article 434-G. Contamination of Common Areas
1. Pollution of places of land, park areas, including the release of municipal waste in unidentified places entails a fine in the amount of five monthly calculation indicators.
2. Repeating the committed actions after the imposed first penalty entail a fine in the amount of ten monthly calculation indicators.