On November 24, Russia’s TASS state news agency announced the signing of the international project for building a highway connecting Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia to Abkhazia. The new highway would cut across the Caucasus Mountains and connect the central North Caucasus to Abkhazia in the South... MORE

Following mid-November’s bloody terrorist attacks in Paris and the ongoing international campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and northern Iraq, Georgian authorities have grown increasingly concerned about the security situation in the Pankisi Gorge area, which is located on the border with the Russian... MORE

Clashes between the police and residents of the long-troubled Absheron peninsula city of Nardaran, on November 25–26, have resulted in numerous arrests and deaths. These deadly incidents have sparked concerns that Azerbaijan may be on the brink of more widespread religious-based conflicts of the kind... MORE

On October 31, Georgia held by-elections for two vacant parliamentary seats in the districts of Martvili and Sagarejo (Channel 1, Rustavi 2, Civil Georgia, October 31). The by-elections did not have much significance from an electoral perspective, since even if the ruling Georgian Dream (GD)... MORE

On November 9, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov traveled to Armenia. The visit was agreed upon shortly before. The next day, President Vladimir Putin ordered the government of Russia to start negotiations with Armenia on establishing a joint regional air defense system (Pravo.gov.ru,... MORE

On October 27, in Baku, representatives of the Council of Europe and the European Union presented several new projects to be implemented in the six Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries—Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia as well as Azerbaijan. The two European organizations have allocated 4.7 million... MORE

The leader of Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev, arrived in Georgia, on November 5, for a two-day official visit (Vestnik Kavkaza, November 5). This was Aliyev’s first trip to Tbilisi in a decade, and the talks he held there with Georgian officials were particularly tense. Cooperation... MORE

The ongoing political and legal stand-off between the Georgian government and the opposition over the ownership of the Rustavi 2 TV channel (Rustavi 2, Media.ge, October 2; see EDM, October 26) has become even more tense as new wiretapped recordings surfaced on October 29. The... MORE

As part of a regional visit, the co-chairs (representatives of the United States, France and Russia) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group visited the Armenian capital of Yerevan on October 26. The next day, they traveled to Karabakh and met... MORE

Georgian prosecutors have questioned the head of the Rustavi 2 TV channel, Nika Gvaramia, in connection to his accusations of government pressure on his company (Civil Georgia, October 22). Gvaramia had claimed that a certain businessman, Aleksi Akhvlediani, told him on behalf of the government... MORE