[tz] Astrakhan region got approval to change its time zone

[Paul Eggert]

On 02/16/2016 07:19 AM, Random832 wrote:
> I'm a bit uncomfortable with Russia being treated as a "second class
> citizen" of the timezone database
The intent is not to treat Russia specially. I would like to remove all 
invented abbreviations from the database in due course, not just the 
invented Russian abbreviations. Europe/Astrakhan is first in this 
process only because it's a new zone, and removal of invented 
abbreviations is less likely to cause backwards-compatibility problems 
there. Assuming the experiment works well enough, the intent is to adopt 
the same practice with other zones both inside and outside Russia that 
have similar issues, e.g., Asia/Urumqi, Pacific/Kiritimati, 
America/Asuncion. Abbreviations like "XJT", "LINT", and "PET" are purely 
our invention and do not have reliable sources.