South Caucasus

The past five years have marked a growing Gulf economic presence in the South Caucasus. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have expanded their regional footprint through equity investments in Azerbaijan and Georgia’s transport and renewable energy sectors. Armenia has been a weak link in interregional chains due to conflict with Azerbaijan and its isolation from regional connectivity frameworks. Yet recently, Yerevan managed to establish profitable trade links to the Gulf, largely thanks to Western sanctions on Russia. The South Caucasus trio sees financial flows from the Gulf as necessary for successful economic diversification. For the Gulf countries, the South Caucasus provides an alternative market for strategic investments, which aligns with their long-term goals of projecting geo-economic influence and boosting trade.

Maka Botchorishvili, the Foreign Minister of Georgia, on Wednesday praised her country’s “strategic partnership” with Turkey as being “based on friendship and strong mutual respect”, following a meeting with her Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara. In her comments, she highlighted the partnership was “further reinforced by continuous political dialogue and high-level engagements”. 

Speaking at a press conference after the 4th Meeting of EU-Armenia Parliamentary Partnership Committee in Yerevan, MEP Nils Ušakovs said that the process of Armenia’s accession to the European Union will require significant reforms over a long time. Ušakovs, co-chair of the committee, said that the reforms will strengthen the country and enable it to make more confident decisions regarding its future.

When Nikol Pashinyan embarked on a march from Gyumri to Yerevan at the end of March 2018 to prevent then President Serzh Sargsyan from clinging onto power, few believed he would succeed. Pashinyan was joined by a small group of allies as they made their way to the Armenian capital. Against all odds, Pashinyan’s gambit worked and is the country's premier today. For those that have followed his career to date, that shouldn't have come as a surprise.

The Azerbaijani government has ordered the suspension of BBC News Azerbaijani operation in Baku whle the influential news agency Turan has been forced to drastically scale down its operations in the country. The BBC said in a statement that it had made the "reluctant decision" to close its office in the country after receiving a verbal instruction from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mehman Aliyev, a prominent journalist and Director of Turan, announced they would be shutting down their offices due to financial problems. Turan was the last independent media outlet that still had offices inside Azerbaijan. Numerous independent journalists have been detained in Azerbaijan while Reporters Without Borders gave the country a highly negative classification on press freedom.  

The Italian Senate has adopted a resolution supporting the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, calling on the government of Italy to strengthen its commitment for both countries to abandon the use of force in the future and maintain peaceful, constructive and open dialogue. The resolution titled ‘On Initiatives to Support the Peace Process Between Armenia and Azerbaijan’ was adopted unanimously on the 19th of February.

The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts in the early 1990s by the armed forces of Armenia involved immeasurable atrocities and extreme violence. Realizing that more than 700,000 people in the region would not easily flee their homes, Armenian leaders resorted to force. The ethnic cleansing carried out by the Armenian armed forces resulted in numerous humanitarian tragedies over the years, but the most devastating was the massacre of civilians in Khojaly, a town in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, in the bitterly cold morning of February 26, 1992.

Mzia Amoglobeli, founder of the independent Georgian outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi, has resumed eating on the 38th day of her hunger strike. She informed her colleagues of her decision in a letter, which was read aloud by Batumelebi‘s editor-in-chief, Eteri Turadze, in the courtyard of the Vivamedi clinic. Mzia Amaglobeli is the first female journalist in Georgia to be recognized as a prisoner of conscience. She was jailed on charges of “assaulting a police officer” and faces a prison sentence of four to seven years. In letters sent from prison, she stressed that her hunger strike was a stand against injustice, not an attempt to secure better conditions for herself.

The United States and Russia agreed in Riyadh on Tuesday to press ahead with efforts to end the war in Ukraine, a US official said, as Kyiv and its European allies watched anxiously from the sidelines and Moscow raised a major new demand. US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the two sides agreed to appoint "respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides".