The approaching year might be groundbreaking for Armenia’s political scene, as the country awaits president Serzh Sargsyan’s decision on what to do after his mandate ends in April 2018.

At the 2017 Eastern Partnership summit the EU and Armenia signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement. A lot will still depend on its implementation, however, the agreement is the most important event in EU-Armenia relations since 2013. The adopted document demonstrates that the EU has instruments to deepen cooperation with the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union.

Interview with Richard Giragosian, the director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC) think tank in Yerevan, Armenia. Interviewer: Małgosia Krakowska.

The Summit’s results have been less ambitious than some of the participants might have expected. The EU confirmed its commitment to the initiative, cautiously putting on the plate a set of limited reforms. Any more consistent steps forward seem to be unfeasible, as there are still numerous points of disagreement among the EU members and their eastern partners.

The European Union’s commitment to the Eastern Partnership region has been cemented by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but for internal reasons, the EU is trying to avoid the costs linked to the countries’ integration. For Russia, the region is vitally important but Moscow cannot muster the resources or an attractive alternative to keep the countries close.

"The upcoming Summit is an opportunity to build on our achievements to-date and to inject new dynamism into our partnership. We need to be ambitious, but also realistic and credible", says Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations.

Is talking about a post-Soviet reality justified? Or is it more of an offence? Does the term “post-Soviet” even make sense today – 26 years since the Soviet Union collapsed? Political scientists tend to answer this question with a “no”. Yet, the works of a collective of photographers, known as Sputnik Photos, show that what we are seeing now is something of a “Soviet afterlife”.

In early April this year I attended a presentation in Berlin of a photo project titled Lost Territories. The project was carried out between 2008 and 2016 by a group of photographers, collectively referred to as Sputnik Photos. During the Berlin event one of the photographers, a Pole named Michał Łuczak, presented the main purpose of the project. His presentation was followed by a discussion with a Russian writer, Sergey Lebedev and me. During the conversation we came to the conclusion that the greatest value of the project did not lie in the artistic quality of the photographs or the interesting travel recollections that were shared by the photographers. Rather, it was how it captured the traces of the Soviet Empire, both material and non-material, which can still be found today in what some call the post-Soviet space. Does this fact mean the Soviet Union, which formally ceased to exist over a quarter century ago, has survived, despite conventional wisdom? Or perhaps, its death is a slow and painful process?

Interview with Razi Nurrulayev, an Azerbaijani politician and chairperson of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (APFP). Interviewer: Małgosia Krakowska.

On April 2nd Armenians took to the ballots to cast their votes in a parliamentary election. It was the first vote since the recent constitutional reform which changed the country’s system from a presidential to parliamentary one. From now on, the president, whose mandate has been substantially reduced according to the reform will be chosen by the parliament for a seven-year term with no possibility of re-election.

For the past couple of days the situation in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, has been tense. A group of armed men has held four policemen hostage in one of the capital’s police stations.  The building was taken over on July 17th and the perpetrators referred to their actions as a revolution and requested the release of their oppositional associates serving prison terms or under investigation. They have also called for the overthrow of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

On 2 June 2016, Germany's Bundestag passed a resolution qualifying the Ottoman era Armenian killings as genocide. A few days before, the Yerevan population welcomed a monument to Garegin Nzhdeh, a Nazi collaborator.

Over the past few months the Chief of Russia's Gazprom, Aleksei Miller, and Georgia’s Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze have been negotiating an energy deal between the two countries. The main issues on Georgia’s agenda have been its diversification plans and increasing energy consumption. Meanwhile, Georgia has not yet ruled out importing gas from Iran. According to Alireza Kameli, the Head of the National Iranian Gas Export Company, Georgian public and private sectors were interested in buying Iranian gas and Georgia and Iran have reached a preliminary agreement on the transportation of 500 mcm of gas to Georgia via Armenia. Georgia denied the statement, claiming that the two countries have not come up with any tangible agreement.