Despite continued failures of the peace talks during the last 17 years (since the ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994), every new meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents raises high hopes in Baku for a breakthrough in the deadlocked negotiations. The Kazan summit on June... MORE

SummaryFollowing two years of negotiations, France and Russia have at last signed a contract finalizing the sale of two French Mistral-class amphibious-assault, helicopter-carrier ships to the Russian Navy for $1.7 billion. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev oversaw the signing ceremony on June 17, during the St.... MORE

The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan failed to reach any tangible agreements during their latest negotiations, all but dashing renewed international hopes for the resolution of the Karabakh conflict. The conflicting parties blame each other for the failure of the summit hosted by Russian President... MORE

The Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Kazan on June 24 was intended to be an event of greater significance than any of the long series of trilateral meetings that had much elaborated the “agreeing-to-disagree” agenda. A leak from the Kremlin indicated that the two Caucasian states that... MORE

Iran’s embattled President Mahmuod Ahmadinejad has caused a stir by his last-minute cancellation of a visit to Armenia that was intended to highlight and cement close ties between the two neighboring states. The unexpected move rekindled speculation in Yerevan about Tehran’s unease over a resolution... MORE

On June 8 in Kayseri (Turkey), Nabucco project companies from the five transit countries –Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Austria– signed with those countries’ corresponding ministries the Project Support Agreements (PSAs) for the construction of the Nabucco pipeline. The five companies plus RWE of Germany... MORE

(Part Two)Georgian-Israeli relations took a virtual nosedive as soon as the verdict of ‘guilty’ was handed down by the Tbilisi City Court on April 1, 2011, in the case Ron Fuchs and Ze’ev Frenkiel. Israel quickly stepped up its attacks with more sophisticated economic, political... MORE

On May 20, two bodyguards of South Ossetia’s leader Eduard Kokoity were killed in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia. According to some reports, Alim Kabulov and Oleg Ikaev were at the Vladikavkaz airport to meet Kokoity, who was expected to return from Moscow on the same day.... MORE

Some 500 demonstrators in a makeshift camp, many of them carrying long sticks and wearing masks, defied police calls to end an unlawful rally on the night of May 25 – 26 in downtown Tbilisi. The police preempted the militants’ declared intention to use violence... MORE

Moscow has stimulated the radical opposition’s actions in Tbilisi (see EDM, May 24), and stands ready to exploit the unrest. Russian state television channels provide sympathetic, over-dramatized coverage of the street action in Tbilisi, for playback to Georgian audiences. Moscow portrays the violence-prone militants as... MORE