Armenia’s embattled leadership has unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition following the bloody suppression of street protests against the official results of last month’s disputed presidential election. More than a hundred supporters of the main opposition presidential candidate, former president Levon Ter-Petrosian, have been... MORE

With only three weeks remaining for necessary damage repair prior to the NATO summit, the German government has perhaps irreparably damaged the Membership Action Plan (MAP) goals of Ukraine and Georgia. Chancellor Angela Merkel has turned down those two countries’ MAP candidacies, thereby following the... MORE

Several West European governments cold-shouldered Georgia’s and Ukraine’s applications for NATO Membership Action Plans (MAPs) during the meeting of NATO countries’ ministers of foreign affairs on March 6 in Brussels. Intended to prepare for the NATO Summit due in early April in Bucharest, the Brussels... MORE

Azerbaijanis increasingly see the recent wave of cease-fire violations in Karabakh as an attempt by Yerevan to divert attention from the domestic turmoil that has erupted since Armenia’s February 19 presidential election. Reportedly, four soldiers from the Azerbaijani side and eight from the Armenian side... MORE

On March 6 Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced a unilateral decision by Russia to lift the economic sanctions against Abkhazia. The Ministry also requested the Commonwealth of Independent States Executive Committee to ask CIS member countries to lift those sanctions as well. At the... MORE

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s February 21-22 Moscow visit, nominally for a multilateral Commonwealth of Independent States summit, centered on carefully prepared bilateral talks by the Georgian delegation with outgoing president Vladimir Putin and ministerial counterparts. The visit succeeded in ameliorating the atmosphere of Georgia’s relations... MORE