Carnegie Moscow Center
Last year, Armenian President Sargsyan committed his country to joining Putin’s Eurasian Union, instead of going toward the EU. A year on, serious discussions between the EU and Yerevan on how to re-launch the relationship have yet to start.
Russian terrorism is deeply rooted in politics, religion, and social issues. Also, it is part and parcel of the global radical movement. Ten years after the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, the repeat of that tragedy is still possible.
Today, the Islamist militants who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004 are weaker than before. But the fact that the North Caucasus has fallen out of the headlines does not mean that its problems are solved.
Raul Khajimba has attained the position of Abkhazian president at the fourth attempt, but he knows it's a far from enviable job.
As Petro Poroshenko embarks on a long steep journey as leader of Ukraine, he would do well to study Eduard Shevardnadze's statecraft in Georgia, with both his great successes and the later disappointments.
It has been six years since the end of the Russia-Georgia war, but its effects still pervade political debates between the Georgian Dream coalition and the once powerful Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM).
The Sochi meeting between Russia’s, Armenia’s, and Azerbaijan’s presidents is but one episode in the series of Russia’s protracted peacemaking efforts. Rather, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict serves as a great pretext for Russia’s presence in the South Caucasus.
Putin enjoyed his moment in the media limelight as a peace-maker over Karabakh. But the lack of substance from the summit suggests that Russia is as out of ideas as anyone else on the Karabakh conflict.
The ceasefire in Nagorny Karabakh has been violated multiple times over the last few days. Without a more substantial peace process that both Armenia and Azerbaijan can buy into, the violence is all too likely to re-occur.
The criminal charges against former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili guarantee more recriminations about the recent past rather than discussion of the country’s future.