Geopolitical competition in the Caspian Sea region over oil and natural gas fields, pipelines carrying these hydrocarbons across that body of water, and security measures intended to protect both have attracted the bulk of the attention of the littoral states as well as outside powers... MORE

On February 14, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, during his visit to the Azerbaijani territories retaken following the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020), ceremonially laid the foundation for a railway that, when completed, will connect the towns of Horadiz (Fuzuli district) and Agbend... MORE

On March 22, a Moscow court sentenced the brother of a former governor of Dagestan to 12 years in prison for bribery and large-scale fraud. Additionally, the court ordered the defendant to pay the government an eight million ruble (around $100,000) fine. Radzhab Abdulatipov had... MORE

On March 6, a modernized Georgian Su-25UB Grach (NATO classification: “Frogfoot”) ground-attack/close air support (CAS) jet, successfully completed a post-repair test flight (Business-partner.ge, March 6). The reconstruction and modernization of Georgia’s fleet of Su-25 aircraft is being carried out in cooperation with Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacture... MORE

On March 11, government forces in Makhachkala, Dagestan, killed a suspected rebel. According to official sources, the suspect had been plotting a terrorist attack on government agencies. Reportedly, the authorities found a machine gun, ammunition and an improvised explosive device (IED) at the site of... MORE

*To read part one, please click here *To read part two, please click here Relations between the authorities in Stepanakert, the capital of the self-declared “republic” of Karabakh, and the government of Nikol Pashinian in Yerevan are complicated and, for the most part, uneasy. Armenia’s... MORE

When the five Caspian littoral states (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan) finally agreed, in August 2018, to the delimitation of the surface of the sea after almost two decades of on-again, off-again talks, many assumed that accord meant the situation in and around the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Russia seems intent on reproducing in Karabakh the model it had earlier developed in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Donbas—namely, a local proto-state with formal institutions under Russian military protection and economic sustenance (see EDM, December 8, 10,... MORE

Russia’s military “peacekeeping” intervention in Upper (“Nagorno”) Karabakh in November 2020 laid the foundation for a Russian de facto protectorate (see EDM, December 8, 10, 2020). The Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020) has resulted in a partition of Azerbaijan’s former Upper Karabakh Autonomous... MORE

On March 14, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan received the delegation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), led by this year’s OSCE chairperson-in-office, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde. During their meeting, Aliyev reiterated his positive assessment of the post-war situation in... MORE