As Russia continues to adapt to its new isolated existence, it appears that nothing will change in the country’s domestic politics. Despite this, history has shown that opportunities to challenge Moscow’s seemingly impenetrable status quo can and will eventually appear.

As Western elections unfold in a politically fragmented environment in 2024, there is a looming risk of the EU overlooking significant political shifts leading up to Georgia’s crucial parliamentary elections on October 26th. Ignoring these developments and omitting the provision of necessary support beyond the soft-power toolbox to the Georgian people could jeopardize Georgia’s hard-fought EU integration process.

Moscow’s brutal actions in Ukraine and at home offer an insight into a country struggling with conceptions of morality. Indeed, Putin’s Russia now appears to be gripped by a nihilism described in detail by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Amid such uncertainties, it is almost impossible to predict the country’s future.

Ukraine’s troubled modern history has naturally had a profound effect on the millions of Ukrainians present in the diaspora. Among these people is Megan Buskey, who returned to the country of her ancestors and found a part of herself of which she knew very little.

A decade after the times of “Caviar Diplomacy” when Azerbaijan would buy up support from the delegates of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the mood among European politicians has turned a full 180 degrees. The Azerbaijani delegation was excluded from the sessions for a year by a clear majority of the votes for the “persistent violation of norms and standards of the institution” and a lack of cooperation with PACE. Is this the beginning of the end of Baku’s participation in the Council of Europe?

Interview with the Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine Mykola Kolisnyk. Interviewer: Kateryna Pryshchepa.

Boris Nemtsov, the indomitable Russian regime critic, died on February 27th 2015 after a pernicious assault on his life, yet the Putin regime survived his violent death almost unscathed. Will Alexei Navalny's untimely death also pass by without any serious consequences for Russia's ruling establishment?

The short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic remains a key example of the spread of communism after the Russian Revolution. Its leading figure was Béla Kun, a man whose complex identity would influence his politics throughout his life.

How the region struggles to break free from the shadow of conflict. Issue 3/2024 is now available for purchase and download!

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.

On September 19th and 20th 2023, Azerbaijan took the Nagorno-Karabakh region by military means and forced the local authorities to dissolve their institutions. As a result, nearly the entire population of local Armenians fled their homes to Armenia. It is still difficult to try to make sense of how this unfolded so swiftly.

After many years of negotiations under the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group, in September 2020, Azerbaijan decided to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh (in this article many of the interlocutors refer to the region as “Artsakh”, which is its name in the Armenian context – editor’s note) conflict via military means and attacked the region. As a guarantor of the security of the Armenians living there, Armenia supported the local population.