Chechen militants in Syria have been going through organizational changes since last summer. The position of the Chechen militants in the Middle East was especially damaged by a conflict within the Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar group and the difficult situation inside the Junud al-Sham group. Those... MORE

On February 19, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey held their fifth trilateral meeting, during which they agreed on the completion date for the construction of the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) railway. The BTK railroad will eventually connect the three countries (Civil Georgia, February 19).... MORE

On February 8, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili personally announced the conclusion of the tender for the construction of the Anaklia deep-water port on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. His remarks were broadcast live on all national TV channels. The prime minister stated that Anaklia Development... MORE

In this year’s State of the State address, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili warned about the increasing influence of Russian “soft power” on his country (Ghn.ge, February 3). Moreover, the United States Intelligence Community’s 2016 Worldwide Threat Assessment report named “effective Russian propaganda” as one of... MORE

Hundreds of Muslim Georgians who live in the autonomous republic of Adjara, in southwestern Georgia, held a protest rally, on February 5, in the regional capital of Batumi. The protesters demanded that Georgian authorities give them permission to construct a new, large mosque in the... MORE

Speaking at a press conference reviewing the year 2015, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unexpectedly revived a question thought to have been closed long ago. “We are receiving news that members of ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—the former name of the Islamic State]... MORE

On January 29, the National Statistics Office (NSO) of Georgia released new economic data, which shows that in 2015, the country’s GDP grew by just 2.8 percent, significantly less than its 4.6 percent growth from 2014 (Geostat.ge, January 29). In fact, for a lower middle... MORE

The Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Energy of Georgia, Kakha Kaladze, and a top official at the Russian energy giant Gazprom, Yelena Burmistrova, failed to reach an agreement during the latest round of talks in Vienna (Rustavi2, January 21). The Georgian Ministry of Energy... MORE

Tbilisi and Moscow’s negotiations over the expansion of Russian Gazprom’s share of the Georgian energy market heightened the political fever in the country over the last several weeks. The negotiations that started largely in secrecy in September 2015 (see EDM, October 21, 2015), have continued... MORE

Since the Bucharest summit of April 2008, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pledged that Georgia (and Ukraine) “will become members of NATO” (Summitbucharest.ro, April 3, 2008), the South Caucasus country has achieved a number of important milestones on its path to closer integration... MORE