Armenia’s government seems to be pressing ahead with its ambitious plans to replace the aging nuclear power station at Metsamor, with a new plant meeting modern safety standards. Having secured Moscow’s support for and participation in the project, the government is now actively looking for... MORE

On February 9, masked South Ossetian police stormed the headquarters of local opposition politician Alla Jioeva in Tskhinvali. Shortly after the raiding police ravaged the building, one of Jioeva’s supporters was arrested, and Jioeva herself was taken to a local hospital with a stroke. The... MORE

The first summit for seven months between Armenia President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev was held on January 23 in Sochi, and mediated by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (as in all previous eight meetings in the past three years). After his failure... MORE

For more than a decade, Nabucco was the only pipeline project (and lately, the frontrunner project) for transporting Caspian gas to EU territory. Nabucco relied exclusively on Azerbaijani gas for the pipeline’s first stage (the hopes to add gas volumes from northern Iraq proved unrealistic... MORE

The Azerbaijan-Turkey project, Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline (TAGP; Turkish acronym TANAP), announced as recently as December 26, emerges as the optimal solution for transporting Azerbaijani gas to Europe, potentially opening the way for Turkmen gas also. The pipeline is planned to be built from 2012 to... MORE

The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have held yet another Russian-mediated meeting that was apparently intended to help their Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, save face after three years of intensive but unsuccessful efforts to broker a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The summit hosted by... MORE

Confidence in the viability of the Nabucco project – at least in its version envisaged from 2004 to 2011 – seems to be fading all around. On January 25, the Nabucco consortium’s management disclosed that it has submitted “amended” proposals to the Shah Deniz gas... MORE

Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire seeking political power in Georgia, is recruiting political allies to his proprietary Georgian Dream movement, ahead of parliamentary elections. A newcomer to politics, Ivanishvili started out by dismissing all of the numerous factions in the extra-parliamentary opposition as useless (he admitted... MORE

Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has appointed his wife, Ekaterine Khvedelidze, as leader of his Georgian Dream movement. Its legal status is that of a “public,” i.e. a non-political organization. However, Georgian Dream pursues the declared goals of turning into a political party, winning the 2012... MORE

Senior US officials have sounded remarkably optimistic about the conduct of Armenia’s forthcoming parliamentary elections, which President Serzh Sargsyan will try to use as a launch pad for winning a second term in office in 2013. Highlighting Washington’s overall satisfaction with the current authorities in... MORE