On July 14, Russia’s State Duma (the parliament’s lower chamber) adopted a law, which allows citizens of countries where the Russian language has a constitutionally accepted official status—Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—to work in Russia as drivers without having to exchange their national driver’s license. Leonid... MORE

In mid-June, the CEO of Russia’s gas monopolist Gazprom, Alexei Miller, paid a spontaneous visit to Yerevan, where he met with Armenia’s Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan. Official information about the meeting is rather scarce. Besides mutually exchanged compliments, reports mention plans for the exploitation of... MORE

On June 13–14, the European Union and Azerbaijan held another round of talks on the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA). Those ongoing discussions were first inaugurated on February 6, with the official visit of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Brussels. Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)... MORE

The Georgian coastal city of Batumi hosted, on May 23, a trilateral meeting of the defense ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia (Azertac, May 23). This trilateral cooperation format was inaugurated in 2012, during a ministerial meeting in Trabzon, Turkey. As expected, a new military... MORE

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

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

The convocation, last February, of a Kurdish conference in Moscow that included the Yezidis (Aranews.net, February 16), combined with new Kurdish-Yezidi claims that the Russian military has promised to provide them with training (Deutsche Welle, March 21), have highlighted Moscow’s continuing effort to win over... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s official visit to Iran in early March 2017—his third in three years—was scheduled to include the testing of a section of a new railway along the Iran-Azerbaijan border. The Astara (Iran)–Astara (Azerbaijan) railroad is part of the North–South Transport Corridor (NSTC),... MORE

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s visit of to the occupied Azerbaijani territories, on March 25, 2017, and his recent statements pertaining to Armenian military drills there demonstrate Yerevan’s unwillingness to settle the conflict via peaceful negotiations. During the final phase of military exercises in the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh... MORE

Groups whose identities do not fit the mold others have for them often become problems for both their host countries and the different communities of which they are a part. In addition, they often make particularly tempting targets for interference by outsiders. One such group... MORE