The Azerbaijani government recently announced further steps aimed at strengthening its strategic ally and neighbor Georgia and improving the post-war conditions there. This tangible help to Georgia, Baku believes, is more important than the political declarations often desired in the Georgian capital.Foremost, the Azerbaijani state... MORE

Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov of Turkmenistan, and Abdullah Gul of Turkey met on November 28 and 29 in Turkmenistan to discuss trilateral cooperation with a focus on natural gas deliveries. The presidents held bilateral talks in Ashgabat before meeting in the trilateral... MORE

Faced with a growing outcry from nationalist groups opposed to major concessions to Azerbaijan, Armenia’s leadership is scrambling to clarify its policy on the unresolved Karabakh conflict to the domestic political elite and the broader public. President Serzh Sarkisian met with leaders of about 50... MORE

Russia’s invasion of Georgia severely disrupted the operation of the energy transit corridor during August and September, causing revenue losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars to Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the oil and gas companies. Physical damage to the corridor, however, turned out to... MORE

Presidents and other senior officials from 14 countries in the Caspian, Black Sea, Central European and Baltic regions, as well as U.S. and EU delegations, attended an energy summit on November 14 in Baku. The event signaled political support for connecting Caspian basin oil and... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visited Turkey on November 5 and 6 as his first official trip abroad since reelection, underscoring the two countries’ special relationship. While traditional, that relationship has evolved substantially during Ilham Aliyev’s presidency and is no longer asymmetrical. As he remarked during... MORE

Effective from November 1, Chevron’s subsidiary TengizChevroil is significantly augmenting oil shipments from Kazakhstan, via Azerbaijan and Georgia, to international markets. This development adds to the evidence that business confidence is returning to the Azerbaijan-Georgia transit corridor, in the aftermath of the Russia-Georgia war. The... MORE

Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, and Serge Sarkisian of Armenia met on November 2 near Moscow to discuss the current state of negotiations on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. With those negotiations moving slowly forward at several levels and on their own momentum,... MORE

Last August the long-frozen conflict between Georgia and Russia suddenly defrosted, erupting in a bitter, five-day military clash. Now a sudden rise in defense spending by Azerbaijan may be a seismic precursor to a possible thawing of a second unresolved Caucasian conflict, the standoff between... MORE