The South Caucasus is no stranger to the plight of displaced persons. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, refugees and internally displaced persons have numbered in the hundreds of thousands due to conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Recent geopolitical shifts, such as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Azerbaijan’s 24-hour military offensive, have reignited concerns about this unresolved issue and the ongoing challenges faced by displaced persons in the region.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 was heralded by many western politicians, academics and others as a largely peaceful event. For many Central Asians and South Caucasians, however, it was far from tranquil. Tajikistan experienced a devastating civil war (1992-97). Georgia fought two wars with Russia over the regions of Abkhazia (1992-93) and South Ossetia (1991-92), while Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh (1992-94). Both Georgia and Azerbaijan were left with large internally displaced person (IDP) populations, the vast majority of whom are still displaced today.

Following the September 2023 campaign by Azerbaijan to re-establish its sovereignty over all Karabakh region, the question now turns to the chance for a stable peace in the South Caucasus. Yet, to answer this question, one needs to examine the many dimensions of the conflict, including internal and geopolitical, to identify the main obstacles to peace. Only then can a strategy for such a process be developed.

In the shadows of the war in Ukraine, another regional development, interconnected to some extent with that conflict, also has the potential to shape the future of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet sphere. This is the Armenia-Azerbaijani peace process and the changing power balance in the South Caucasus. The geopolitical players shaping Ukraine's war and peace landscape also keep the Armenia-Azerbaijani peace process in focus. Nevertheless, there are distinctive features in both cases worth exploring.

The war in Abkhazia began in August 1992 and lasted for 13 months. By the end of the war, Georgia had 300,000 internally displaced people. Today, Abkhazia is recognized as occupied and the Russian occupation army is stationed there. The people living on both sides of the de facto dividing line are friends and relatives, but now they cannot meet or rarely manage to see each other, as Eliso Shamatava explains through her experiences.

“Eighty-five families live in the village of Khurcha. At least one person from almost each household has emigrated. My son is also gone. He took a gap year at the university and left to work in Poland. We, women living along the dividing line, work. But when we want to sell produce at the Zugdidi market, we are not allowed to take it with us on the municipal bus. We have to hire a taxi. This is how we live here,” says 52-year-old Eliso Shamatava from Khurcha in Georgia, who tells us about the specifics of living along the administrative boundary line.

When Putin is finally gone, a majority of the elite and population will want Russia to return to Europe. Europe should facilitate that. There is a massive generational shift currently underway in Russia. These people are open to the outside world, western culture and are independent of the Russian state and Soviet ideology. That shift is closer than people think and the world needs to be ready. That is where the next battle will take place and it is one the West could lose.

On an alcohol-fuelled Zoom catch up, my friends and I put the world to rights. The usual suspects came up: sports, holidays, our kids, women and politics. Before we knew it, the conversation turned to the elephant in the room: the war. Eyebrows were raised, deep breaths exhaled and shoulders shrugged. A couple of heads were scratched. What more can we say? How much guilt should we feel for something we did not personally choose, support or want? We abruptly moved on, but exactly one week later Russian forces recaptured Avdiivka. They had the wind in their backs.

An interview with Marianna Kiyanovska, Ukrainian poet and translator. Interviewers: Kinga Anna Gajda and Iwona Reichardt

KINGA ANNA GAJDA: In your collection of poems The Voices of Babyn Yar you speak about the Holocaust through the voices of those who witnessed this atrocity. Your poems are not a one-person narrative but a polyphony of the different voices of witnesses who talk about what happened during the Second World War. That perspective is understandable. However, now Ukraine is again in a state of war and you and your loved ones are the witnesses to the crimes and destruction. What does this experience mean to you and how is it reflected in your poetry?

MARIANNA KIYANOVSKA: It is a very complicated experience. To answer this question, I need to refer to my book, titled in Ukrainian Блискавка зустрічає воду і вітер, which could be translated into English as The lightning meets water and wind. This collection of poems was published in Ukraine in 2023 and is in a sense a continuation of The Voices of Babyn Yar.

Six months after Russia's invasion started, I gave birth to my child and breastfed her for the first time in a bomb shelter, to the sound of sirens. I moved from Ukraine to Poland with my baby and despite the joy of motherhood I had never felt so much loneliness and darkness as I did there, far from home, when my country was fighting the enemy, and I was not. But soon I joined the fight for victory.

It all started for me at night on Cathedral Square in Vilnius. There, there was not a single soul, snow was gently falling from the sky and a flash was shining dimly on the camera of the Lithuanian cameraman who was also my driver and guardian angel. An hour ago, I had flown in from Kyiv. The city was sleeping and the streets were quiet. Yet in a few minutes it would be six o'clock in Kyiv and I had to join the morning news – the first broadcast of the new Ukrainian TV channel Espreso, the launch of which our young team had been preparing all autumn. It was an important day for me, but even more important for Ukraine.

The Russian war against Ukraine has substantially changed perceptions of conflict and crisis in the European Union. As a recent comparison study shows, the conflict has encouraged fears of war, awareness of developments in Ukraine, questions concerning the broader frame of this war, and the involvement of the respective countries in it.

By accepting and legitimising a deal resulting in net gains for Russia, western countries would not only fail to respect Ukraine’s political sovereignty and territorial integrity, but they would also contradict their own obligations under international law to not legitimise aggression against another state.

Debate continues in the West as to what kind of aid should be sent to Ukraine. If we are to take Russia’s invasion seriously, however, we must move past such discussions. Only the full backing of Kyiv and its fight can ensure a peaceful future not only for Ukraine but the West as a whole.

Iran is one of the largest and most influential countries in the Middle East. Given the protests of recent months and Iranian involvement in the Russian war in Ukraine, it is necessary to bring Iran back into the spotlight of geopolitical analysis.

Since mid-September 2022, people in Iran have been demonstrating against the regime. The protests were triggered by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Jina Mahsa Amini. She was arrested by Iran's morality police for allegedly violating Islamic dress codes and died in police custody. The incident sparked mass protests across the country.

The war in Ukraine reminds us that the peaceful civic revolutions of 1989-91 have not yet been completed. Today Vladimir Putin is once again trying to stop Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity and reverse its dynamics. He is also the co-creator of a new nationalistic populism in Europe and the United States. The main goal of this movement is to destroy civic culture and solidarity among people.

When we ask Europeans what comes to their mind when they think of the word solidarity, we see that their answer today differs compared to what it was before February 24th 2022. Many will probably say that for them solidarity means support for the democratic Ukrainian society that is being attacked by Putinist Russia. Among the answers there might be justified opinions that the Russian political system has become fascist. The war in Ukraine is the next step in Russia’s authoritarian radicalisation, which translates into increased violence and aggression against its neighbours, but also against the Russian society. All dissent is brutally crushed there.

Poland responded generously to the mass inflow of refugees from Ukraine as Russia invaded in February last year. However, the need for help continues with every day of the war. While times are indeed hard for the country’s army of volunteers, they are determined to continue aiding people in their time of need.

Right before the end of 2022 the vice chairman of the Polish Development Fund, Bartosz Marczuk, published a tweet in which he presented the amount of money that Poland had spent on helping Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian aggression on February 24th. The data that he presented showed that altogether in 2022 it was between 35 and 40 billion Polish zlotys, which is between 7.5 and 8.5 billion euros. Out of it, ten billion zlotys were spent on weapons, six billion amounted to state support for Ukrainian refugees (including support for children), around ten billion was spent by local governments and non-governmental organisations, and another ten billion was made up of the private help of the Polish people.