There's nothing special about Almaty. I tested your XML, and it works fine.
You must have made some other silly mistake, i.e., forgetting to set your files OnModActivated > UpdateDatabase, or if these are excerpts of larger XML files, then there's some other error earlier in the file.
[Note it's easier if you attach the built mod, both for me to get a working testbed, and also to see what other kinds of errors you might have made; but I assume you're just being cagey about revealing the rest of the mod.]