Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
If a new Ostpolitik is to have a really transformative effect in the six East European countries outside Russia, then its central component should be the perspective of eventual EU membership.
Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency will have a significant impact on Moscow's relations with the South Caucasus, but the nature of that impact remains unclear.
The European Union has an opportunity to make a significant difference in their eastern borderlands, through a combination of social, economic, and political incentives.
Popular depictions of the 2008 Georgian-Russian conflict over South Ossetia have served primarily to obscure what really happened and undermine any potential opportunity for the two sides to come to a rapprochement.
The mysterious assassinations of prominent politicians and journalists over the past fifteen years suggest that Russian state security may still be involved in politically-motivated crimes, even if they are not directly ordered by the country’s leaders.
The authorities in Baku seem intent on building a new Dubai on the Caspian, but there is a dark side to the boom in Azerbaijan’s capital.
The Nagorny Karabakh peace process is entering an unusually difficult phase following the disappointing meeting in Kazan between Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev.
The personal involvement of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in attempting to broker peace in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh may help usher in a fundamentally new phase in a conflict that has been stalled for the past two decades.
Georgia is entering a crucial period of transition and elections in 2012-13 and although the country has taken steps toward reform, so far the governing elite has done little to build a sustainable model.
Georgia's main party has won two elections and dominates the political landscape, but with high unemployment and growing food inflation, it risks becoming a victim of its own success.
