South Caucasus

The core team of the Joint Armenian-Azerbaijani Liaison Group on confidence-building measures in support of lasting peace in the South Caucasus (JOLIG) met in Tbilisi on Friday 12 May 2023 to discuss ongoing regional processes and plan its work for the rest of the year. The Group reviewed the current state of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and the process to normalise them. It welcomed the resumption of face to face negotiations between the two countries held at Foreign Minister level in Washington DC in the first week of May and hoped that the process will continue and be brought to a successful conclusion. It looked forward to the next meeting of the leaders of the two countries in Brussels on 14 May and subsequently, and the planned meetings in Chisinau in June and in Granada in October, and also noted that a meeting of the foreign ministers was also planned to be held in Moscow later this month. The Group noted that this intensive diplomatic activity is necessary and instrumental for the early and successful completion of the negotiations.

After months of diplomacy by e-mail, Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Washington DC in the first week of May for negotiations led by the foreign ministers of the two countries, with the United States providing facilitation and support, writes commonspace.eu in this editorial. The presence of US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, at the opening of the talks, raised expectations that the talks may be conclusive. They were not, but enough progress was made for Blinken to return for the closing session, telling his guests that the US appreciated that the last bit of any negotiating process was going to be the most difficult. "The temptation to draw out the ongoing situation for many more months, with the hope that time is on their side, has big risks. Unplanned incidents still have the capacity to escalate quickly and spiral out of control, feeding on the existing level of mistrust. The violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan reported this morning (11 May) is a case in point. So in many ways this is the moment of truth, even if some would argue that we have been here before. Somehow however this time it feels different, even if the nitty-gritty problems have not gone away," they add.

On Wednesday (10 May), Russian President Vladimir Putin signed two separate decrees lifting a ban on flights to Georgia, and abolishing visas for Georgian citizens. From 15 March, Georgian nationals will be allowed to enter Russia without visas for up to 90 days. Lifting the ban on flights reverses a 2019 decision in which the Kremlin banned air traffic with Georgia following a wave of anti-Kremlin protests there. After President Putin signed the decrees, the Russian Foreign Ministry also released a statement reversing its 2019 advice against Russian citizens travelling to Georgia. The statement added that Putin's decrees "are in line with our principled approach of consistently facilitating the conditions for communication and contacts between the citizens of Russia and Georgia, despite the absence of diplomatic relations". Later, Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti reported that the Georgian Deputy Minister of the Economy and Sustainable Development Mariam Kvrivishvili said that Georgia would issue permits for direct flights to non-sanctioned airlines, before adding that authorities were yet to receive any such requests from Russian airlines.

The European Union has officially confirmed that the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will meet in Brussels on Sunday (14 May). The official announcement comes after a claim made in the Financial Times yesterday (8 May) about the two leaders meeting in the Belgian capital this weekend. In a statement, the EU said "President Michel has continued to be in close contact with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to advance the EU’s efforts to promote stability in the South Caucasus and normalisation between the two countries," before announcing the trilateral meeting in Brussels this weekend. The statement adds that this meeting in Brussels will be "flanked" by a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the sidelines of the upcoming European Political Community summit in Chisinau, Moldova, on 1 June 2023. In addition to this, the EU also said that Pashinyan and Aliyev have "agreed to continue to meet trilaterally in Brussels as frequently as necessary to address ongoing developments on the ground and standing agenda items of the Brussels meetings".