As oil prices have gone down significantly, the consequences may go well beyond the depreciation of the Russian ruble and Russia’s economic decline. Armenian Deputy Minister of Finance, Pavel Safaryan, recently stated that some of loans previously promised by Russia, including the $270 million loan... 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

Azerbaijan, the third largest oil producer in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) after Russia and Kazakhstan, shifted to a floating exchange rate regime on December 21, 2015, triggered by a rapid fall in oil prices. For the long term Azerbaijan had almost a constant... 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

The deterioration of Turkey-Russia ties on the one hand and Iran–Saudi Arabia relations on the other have been a major source of worry for the Azerbaijani authorities over the past year. The leadership officially acknowledged this concern last week (January 10) (APA, January 10). However,... MORE

Moscow’s plans to push through a law establishing criminal penalties for those who deny that the 1915 events in the Ottoman Empire were a “genocide” have sparked unusual dissent among members of the Azerbaijani diaspora in the Russian Federation. This, in turn, has raised speculation... 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