On July 7, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and Ambassador Zurab Abashidze, the special envoy of the Georgian prime minister for relations with Russia, held a special meeting in Prague. One of the topics of the meeting was further development of transport coordination between... MORE

On July 14, Russia’s State Duma (the parliament’s lower chamber) adopted a law, which allows citizens of countries where the Russian language has a constitutionally accepted official status—Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—to work in Russia as drivers without having to exchange their national driver’s license. Leonid... MORE

On July 14, several hundred agitated participants of the “March of Georgians”—a loose alliance of identitarian political groups, some of them self-proclaimed “fascists” (Facebook.com, July 14)—rallied along Aghmashenebeli Avenue, in central Tbilisi (YouTube, July 14). The political mainstream of the country largely ignored the happening.... MORE

Baku hosted the first joint gathering of the heads of the railway administrations of Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Poland, on June 19. The meeting was dedicated to the newly-launched “South-West Transport Corridor,” which links into the broader Trans-Caspian International Route project launched in 2016.... MORE

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and Ambassador Zurab Abashidze, the special envoy of the prime minister of Georgia, held a special meeting in Prague, on July 7 (Agenda.ge, July 7). In the absence of regular diplomatic relations between the two countries since Russia’s aggression... MORE

With the 2016 parliamentary elections barely over, Georgia is readying itself for the October 2017 local elections. Their importance is hard to overestimate. Five mayoral posts for five self-governing cities and 67 gubernatorial offices (referred to in Georgia as Gamgebeli) for 67 municipalities, are up... MORE

In mid-June, the CEO of Russia’s gas monopolist Gazprom, Alexei Miller, paid a spontaneous visit to Yerevan, where he met with Armenia’s Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan. Official information about the meeting is rather scarce. Besides mutually exchanged compliments, reports mention plans for the exploitation of... MORE

When the Minister of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Zhong Shan and Georgia’s Minister of Economy Giorgi Gakharia signed a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in Shanghai, on May 13, it all looked good on paper. Following a seven-month-long process of final-stage... MORE

On June 13–14, the European Union and Azerbaijan held another round of talks on the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA). Those ongoing discussions were first inaugurated on February 6, with the official visit of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Brussels. Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)... MORE

Large-scale military exercises in South Ossetia (the region of Georgia occupied by Moscow as a result of the 2008 Russian invasion) involving units of the locally stationed 58th Army of the Russian Armed Forces came to a close on June 17 (Lenta, June 13). The... MORE