On May 28, as Azerbaijan marked its most important national holiday, Republic Day, and finalized preparations to host the UEFA Europa League Final at the Baku Olympic Stadium (May 29), events around the sprawling Davit Gareja (named Keshkichidag, in Azerbaijani) Monastery complex again started to... MORE

Moscow’s mistrust of the Armenian government headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dates all the way back to his rise to power last year in the so-called “Velvet Revolution.” And that mistrust has persisted despite Pashinyan’s various foreign policy gambits designed to win Russia’s confidence... MORE

The government in Yerevan, formed by Nikol Pashinyan after the “Velvet Revolution” and snap parliamentary elections in 2018, is apparently facing its first serious crisis. Specifically, the start of the trial of former president Robert Kocharyan (in office in 1998–2008) and some other officials charged... MORE

Azerbaijan’s participation in the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which took place in Beijing, on April 25–28, proved successful for Baku, having resulted in a number of important new, non-oil-sector investment projects in the South Caucasus country. Specifically, during the Forum, Azerbaijani... MORE

Serbia is preparing to sign a free trade agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in October, hoping to gain access to a market of 180 million people. At the same time, the Western Balkan country’s accession negotiations with the world’s largest trading bloc,... MORE

Until the Russian Federation launched a barrage of cruise missiles against Syria from ships in the Caspian Sea in October 2015 (see EDM, October 26, 2015), few people in the West devoted much attention to Russia’s Caspian Flotilla, viewing it, if at all, as a... MORE

“Getting Out From ‘In-Between’ ” was the suggestive title of a 2018 RAND Corporation study devoted to the former Soviet republics that became members of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative. The EaP just celebrated its tenth anniversary; and according to some not quite impartial... MORE

Moscow has organized and deployed a large network of “government-organized non-governmental organizations” (GONGO) in both Russia itself and in Belarus. These entities were first elaborated prior to the 2014 Russian attack on Ukraine to promote the integration and absorption of Belarus into the Russian Federation.... MORE

A long-awaited European Union–Azerbaijani strategic partnership agreement was not signed on May 13–14, at the Eastern Partnership’s (EaP) tenth anniversary summit, despite all the optimism and expectations that had been voiced earlier. The two sides signed a document listing four priority areas for partnership on... MORE

May 21 is the most unhappy day of the year for the more than half a million Circassians still living in their ancestral homeland and the more than five million who live in forced exile. On that date, in 1864—after a war that lasted more... MORE