The National Assembly of Armenia affirmed Karen Karapetyan as the country’s new prime minister, on September 13. Karapetyan’s previous career was predominantly linked in various ways to Russia’s natural gas producer Gazprom (with the exception of ten months in 2010–2011, when he served as mayor... MORE

Sunday’s runoffs in 50 precincts—which became necessary because none of the candidates in these single-mandate districts garnered an absolute majority of the vote in the first round of the October 8 Georgian parliamentary elections—were overwhelmingly won by the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia (GDDG). On October... MORE

The opposition United National Movement (UNM) came in distant second in the Georgian parliamentary elections that took place on October 8 (see EDM, October 13). The party of former president Mikheil Saakashvili received only 27.11 percent of the vote for the party list. And it... MORE

Karachaevo-Cherkessia, a small republic in the Northwestern Caucasus, was among the first areas of the Russian Federation to witness a rise in Islamic jamaats during the 1990s. Yet today, Karachaevo-Cherkessia is a relatively quiet place, unlike neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria and most other North Caucasus republics to... MORE

In the past, Moscow has used population censuses to promote divisions within the Circassian nation. As part of its divide-and-conquer effort in the North Caucasus as well as to isolate them from the far larger Circassian nation abroad, Moscow has required members of that community... MORE

Top decision makers, opinion leaders and CEOs of the world’s largest energy companies, including BP, Gazprom, Shell and Total, convened in Istanbul, on October 9–13, for the 23rd World Energy Congress. High-level officials, including 56 ministers from various countries around the globe, also attended the... MORE

Political infighting and bureaucratic red tape in Italy are jeopardizing the realization of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the westernmost segment of a wider energy corridor to bring Azerbaijani natural gas to Southeastern Europe. In turn, these problems are frustrating Rome’s efforts to establish a Mediterranean... MORE

A significant spike in violence has been registered in the North Caucasus. Within the span of just one week, October 3–9, an estimated 18 people were killed and 4 more suffered injuries in insurgency-related violence across the region. Fifteen suspected rebels, including eight in Chechnya,... MORE

Late on the evening of October 4, a car was blown up next to Tbilisi’s Freedom Square. Givi Targamadze, a high-ranking member of Georgia’s United National Movement (UNM) party, along with his driver, survived; four passersby were injured, one seriously (Civil Georgia, October 4). Targamadze... MORE

Three times in the course of the last century, the Russian military has formed ethnically-based units. During World War I, the tsars created the famed “savage” division, which consisted of regiments made up of people from the Caucasus. In the Russian Civil War, such groups... MORE