Since at least mid-October 2022, Iran and Azerbaijan have been grappling with the latest and most serious wave of escalations between the two neighboring, Shia-majority Muslim nations in recent years. The escalation has manifested itself most clearly through the war games being conducted along the... MORE

On October 24, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev arrived in Georgia for a one-day working visit. The abrupt nature of Aliyev’s visit was characterized as “strange” and “mysterious” by many experts in Tbilisi (Civil.ge; Netgazeti.ge, October 24). Indeed, the brevity of the visit and its format... MORE

On November 18, the Azerbaijani parliament approved a bill on the opening of Azerbaijan’s embassy in the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv (Report.az, November 18). This is a historic decision, as until now, Azerbaijan had refused to reciprocate the opening of an Israeli embassy in... MORE

The news of Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei’s sudden death has, for now, overshadowed all other news coming from Belarus. Exactly two years ago, Makei’s deputy Oleg Kravchenko also died from a sudden heart attack. Both Makei and Kravchenko used to be the major champions... MORE

Video footage of how enthusiastically the inhabitants of Kherson, with tears of joy, greeted their liberators from the Ukrainian Armed Forces has spread globally (YouTube, November 13). Against this backdrop, the official published data on the results of the “referendum” held by the occupation administration... MORE

Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev secured a second term in office following the snap presidential elections held on November 20, winning 81 percent of the vote. Tokayev will serve a single seven-year term, according to changes in the country’s constitution that increased the mandate from five to... MORE

On October 20, the inauguration of the Zangilan International Airport took place in the East Zangezur district of Azerbaijan (Azertag, October 20). The airport was jointly inaugurated by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who became the first foreign... MORE

On November 11, a summit of the leaders of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) convened in Samarkand, Uzbekistan (Report.az, November 5). This major gathering came amid the OTS’s re-emerging significance as a key regional organization and a critical platform for rapprochement between the Central... MORE

On October 19, Romania’s Romgaz and Azerbaijan’s Socar inked a memorandum of understanding expressing an intention to “explore the opportunity of jointly developing a liquefied natural gas project [LNG] in the Black Sea” (Romgaz.ro, October 19). Both parties committed to preparing a comprehensive feasibility study;... MORE

Dmitry Gurnevich of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) analyzed the biographies of Belarus’s top-ranking military officers and concluded that many of them were either born in Russia, graduated from Russian military academies, or both (Svaboda, November 3). Specifically, out of the nine top military leaders,... MORE