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

On December 23, Irakli Garibashvili resigned from his post as prime minister of Georgia (Channel 1 TV, Rustavi 2 TV, Imedi TV, December 23, 2015). The decision came as a surprise to Georgian society since, just two days earlier, Prime Minister Garibashvili boasted that his... MORE

In Yerevan, on December 23, the energy ministers of Armenia, Georgia, and Iran as well as the chief executive of the Rosseti joint-stock company, which manages Russia’s power distribution grids, signed a memorandum on cooperation in the energy sphere. According to the Armenian Ministry of... MORE

On the night of December 9, unidentified assailants attacked an office of the most influential opposition party of Georgia, United National Movement (UNM), in the town of Dedoplistskaro, near the capital of Tbilisi (Civil Georgia, December 10). Former Georgian president (2008–2013) and the current governor... MORE

United National Movement (UNM), Georgia’s once powerful political party, which spent nine years (2003–2012) in power, is in serious trouble. The start of December 2015 brought new revelations of the party’s internal power struggle and fragmentation, which turns out to be much deeper than previously... MORE