
Latest Articles about The Caucasus

Does Georgia Have Sufficient Resources to Create a New Military Reserve System?
The Georgian parliament’s Committee on Defense and Security met on May 12 to continue lawmakers’ discussions on how best to restructure the Georgian military reserves (Newsday Georgia, May 12). Currently, the reserves are built exclusively on a territorial and mobilization principle: according to legislation passed... MORE

Armenia and India Build Strategic Relationship
With Azerbaijan and Pakistan currently pursuing a strategic partnership (see EDM, September 28, 2016; December 15, 2016), Armenia and India have decided to step up their cooperation across several dimensions. Indeed, the past six months were marked by a visible reinvigoration of Armenian-Indian bilateral ties,... MORE

Moscow Pressing Azerbaijani Diaspora to Send a Loud Signal to Baku
The Russian Supreme Court ruled, on May 15, to revoke the registration of the All-Russia Azerbaijanis Congress (ARAC), the largest and most influential Azerbaijani Diaspora organization in Russia. The initial decision came on March 9, at the request of the Russian Ministry of Justice, which... MORE

Russia Increasingly Treats Georgia as Its Prospective Satellite
The last several weeks were quite tumultuous for Georgia. The country experienced a heightened level of Russian intimidation and ended up on the receiving end of several humiliating statements by high-ranking Russian politicians. The first such incident involved the so-called Night Wolves, a Russian biker... MORE

New Controversies Swirl Around Russian Military Base in Armenia
The trial related to the most shocking crime committed in Armenia in recent years—the murder of a family of seven, including two babies, by a Russian soldier stationed at the 102nd military base at Gyumri (see EDM, January 16, 2015; January 30, 2015)—has reached a... MORE

Moscow’s Efforts to Erase Circassian History Are Backfiring
Like the tsarist authorities who expelled the Circassians from the North Caucasus in 1864, an action many refer to as an “act of genocide,” and the Soviet ones who divided that nation up into a series of smaller ethnic communities, including the Adygei, the Kabardin,... MORE

Embrace of Iranian Overtures Undermines Georgia’s Counter-Terrorism and NATO Integration Efforts
Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili recently visited the United States. And the main tangible result of his delegation’s meetings with US President Donald J. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was the signing of the General Security of Information Agreement... MORE

Proposed Georgian Constitutional Amendments Lack Support of President, Opposition
A public discussion of the draft amendments to Georgia’s constitution, initiated by the ruling Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia (GDDG) party, has begun (Civil Georgia, May 3). The proposed constitutional reforms are profound. According to many experts, if the package of amendments is adopted, it will effectively... MORE

Are the Littoral States Close to Signing an Agreement on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea?
Moscow’s chief negotiator on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, Igor Bratchikov, stated, on April 14, at the international “Caspian Dialogue” forum in Moscow, that “the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea is almost ready, and the absolute majority of provisions have... MORE

Anti-Western Propaganda in Georgia Grows in Strength and Sophistication
Georgia’s Media Development Foundation (MDF) recently released a 53-page report on anti-Western propaganda in the country. The April 18 report covers the period from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2016. It relies on a year-long study of anti-Western messages and information (or often disinformation)... MORE