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Coverage across the South Caucasus — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

103 stories · Armenia
A tall stack of blank slate-blue paper slips bound with an amber band stands beside a stack of three on a sand-coloured table.
PoliticsAnalysis27 Oct

Armenia’s ruling party tops 18 of 19 local votes, and its leader is ‘by no means happy’

Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission gives Civil Contract first place in 18 of the 19 communities that voted by party lists on Sunday, with shares above 90 percent in five where it ran alone. On Monday Nikol Pashinyan said he was ‘by no means happy’ with such figures and that Armenia needs an opposition that puts the state first. Parliament sits today with the TRIPP agreement on its agenda.

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  1. Six identical conference chairs stand in a row against a sand wall, five slate blue and one amber chair pushed back out of the line.
    PoliticsBrief26 Oct

    Armenia has effectively already withdrawn from the CSTO, Masadykov says

    Taalatbek Masadykov, secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, said Armenia no longer takes part in the bloc’s decisions, exercises or core activities and has in effect left, Armenpress reported on Friday, citing TASS. He did not rule out Armenia’s membership coming up at the Collective Security Council in Moscow on 11 November. Armenia’s parliament debates ratification of the TRIPP agreement on Tuesday.

  2. Close-up of a brass door chain holding a slate-blue door ajar, its last link catching an amber highlight.
    PoliticsAnalysis23 Oct

    Pashinyan calls the EAEU report a third attempt to change Armenia’s government

    Asked on 22 October about the four governments’ report on suspending the EAEU treaty for Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan said member states have no right to expel a member and called the report a third attempt to change the government after 2023 and June 2026. He ruled out an economic apocalypse from gas at $300, and on Friday the CSTO’s secretary general said Armenia had de facto left that bloc.

  3. Five brass padlocks on one chain, four locked and the fifth hanging open with no key, the open shackle catching amber light.
    PoliticsAnalysis22 Oct

    Armenia knows of no way to suspend an EAEU member, Mirzoyan says

    Armenia’s foreign minister said on 21 October that his government knows of no legal mechanism by which four EAEU members can suspend a fifth, that sovereignty takes precedence over trade, and that he does not know how far a unilateral gas price rise would be in the spirit of partnership. Earlier that afternoon a parliamentary committee voted four to one for the TRIPP agreement with the United States.

  4. A thick mooring rope pulled taut between two iron bollards on a quay, its fibres splitting at one point with a single amber strand showing.
    PoliticsAnalysis21 Oct

    Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan sign an EAEU appeal that prices a suspension of Armenia

    The heads of government of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan sent the Eurasian Economic Commission on Tuesday a report on what suspending the union treaty for Armenia would cost: gas assumed at $300 instead of $177.50 a thousand cubic metres, trade with the union cut by 55.6%, remittances from Russia halved. Their appeal goes to four presidents and Armenia’s prime minister, two months before the presidents’ December date.

  5. A gravel road embankment curving through a dry mountain valley at dusk, with a single amber marker post in the foreground.
    PoliticsBrief20 Oct

    Armenia’s parliamentary committee takes up the TRIPP agreement on Wednesday

    The National Assembly’s foreign relations committee debates the ratification of the framework agreement on strategic cooperation with the United States on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity on Wednesday 21 October, with Ararat Mirzoyan as rapporteur. Ratification itself falls to the plenary, which opens on 27 October.

  6. Schematic map of the South Caucasus and Central Asia with Lakes Sevan and Issyk-Kul marked and a dotted line between Yerevan and Bishkek.
    PoliticsBrief19 Oct

    Japarov leaves Yerevan with a roadmap to 2029, a travel agreement and a pension accord

    Sadyr Japarov’s official visit to Armenia on 16 and 17 October ended with a joint statement with Nikol Pashinyan and a set of documents exchanged in Yerevan: a cooperation roadmap for 2027 to 2029, an agreement on procedures for citizens’ visits and stays, a memorandum on protecting Lakes Sevan and Issyk-Kul, a sister-city agreement between Yerevan and Bishkek and an agreement on cooperation in pension provision, Armenpress reported on Saturday.

  7. A string of slate-blue glass insulator discs on a power line under a golden sky capped by an amber metal clamp.
    EconomyBrief16 Oct

    Yerevan declares ENA an overriding public interest and sets up a railway group with Russia

    Armenia’s government recognised 100% of the shares of Electric Networks of Armenia, or ENA, owned by the Tashir group, as an overriding public interest at its sitting on 15 October, the status Armenian law requires before the state can take property, News.am reported. Tashir’s owner Samvel Karapetyan leads the opposition Strong Armenia alliance. Nikol Pashinyan the same day set up a working group with Russia on the railway concession.

  8. A single blue ink line drawn across a sheet of kraft paper toward an amber glass inkwell in low sunlight.
    PoliticsBrief15 Oct

    Pashinyan sets terms for peace: no enclaves on either side, all roads open, no claims

    Armenia’s prime minister set out on 14 October what the country should look like after the peace agreement with Azerbaijan is signed and ratified: the same 29,743 square kilometres the state counts today, borders drawn from the Alma-Ata Declaration, enclaves exchanged for land of equal size and all roads open, within TRIPP and beyond it.

  9. A stack of five slate-blue passports on a desk under an amber lamp.
    PoliticsBrief14 Oct

    Armenia counts 45,098 new citizens among the people displaced from Karabakh in 2023

    Deputy interior minister Armen Ghazaryan told a working discussion in the National Assembly on 13 October that 53,099 applications for Armenian citizenship have come from people forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, adults and minors, and that 45,098 have received it. Uptake rose, he said, once citizenship became a condition of the state housing assistance programme.

  10. Grouped bar chart of IMF real GDP growth forecasts for nine regional economies in 2026 and 2027, with a dashed amber line at 3.1 percent for world growth in 2026.
    EconomyBrief13 Oct

    The IMF slows seven of nine regional economies in 2026 and lifts Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan

    The IMF’s October World Economic Outlook, published on Tuesday, has growth slowing this year in seven of the nine economies CAW covers, with Kyrgyzstan still the fastest at 9% and Azerbaijan the slowest at 1.7%. Uzbekistan edges up to 7.8% and Azerbaijan gains too, from 1.4%. World growth slows to 3.1% in 2026 and recovers to 3.4% in 2027, the Fund says.

  11. A terraced open-pit mine bench in a mountain valley at dawn, with one amber lamp on a distant post.
    EconomyBrief12 Oct

    Amulsar opens with the state at 12.5% and three towns promised $7 to 9 million a year

    Nikol Pashinyan launched operations at the Amulsar gold mine on Saturday, saying the minerals “that turned into gold before our eyes today belong to the Republic of Armenia”, Armenpress reported. Lydian Armenia operates it with the state at 12.5%. Gnel Sanosyan, the government’s representative on the operator’s board, said Jermuk, Vayk and Sisian would receive $7 to 9 million a year and Jermuk National Park $5 million.

  12. A rope pulled taut from a stone arch bracket on a sand-coloured wall to a slate-blue plinth, with one amber knot in the middle.
    PoliticsBrief9 Oct

    Armenia’s Constitutional Court rejects the opposition’s challenge on the Catholicos clause

    The Constitutional Court refused on Friday to examine a petition by the Strong Armenia and Armenia factions against the National Assembly’s decision approving the government programme, which envisages the removal of Catholicos Karekin II, ruling that programme provisions are political statements without normative content. Speaker Ruben Rubinyan also signed the order composing a parliamentary inquiry committee on the clergy that only majority deputies joined.

  13. A long slate-blue conference table with eight open folders, each with a pen, and a ninth folder closed with an amber seal and its pen lying beside it.
    PoliticsAnalysis9 Oct

    CIS leaders sign 15 documents at Avaza and Azerbaijan is absent from the memory statement

    Azerbaijan is not among the eight signatories of the statement on historical memory adopted at Avaza on Friday, by the Kremlin’s text, one of 15 documents signed as the Commonwealth’s 35th-anniversary council handed the chair to Uzbekistan from 1 January and heard Mirziyoyev invite the leaders to Bukhara next year and Aliyev offer to chair in 2028. Iran’s president sat in for the first time.

  14. A map-like view from above of a sand-coloured highland with one slate-blue road corridor and an amber dotted line of pylons beside it.
    EnergyBrief9 Oct

    Armenian and Azerbaijani officials meet in Goris on where TRIPP’s power lines will run

    Representatives of the relevant structures of Armenia and Azerbaijan held a technical meeting in Goris on Thursday on the placement of power transmission lines within the TRIPP project, Armenia’s Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure and Azerbaijan’s Cabinet of Ministers said in near-identical texts the same afternoon. The sides discussed technical questions, coordination between their bodies and the next steps needed to move the work forward.

  15. A glass laboratory slide on a sand-coloured bench, frost receding across its surface and one corner lit amber.
    PoliticsBrief9 Oct

    Rospotrebnadzor ends the Irkutsk watch as Armenia’s new commission sits for the first time

    Medical observation of every contact of the laboratory worker who died in Irkutsk has ended, the whole set of preventive measures was completed on 8 October and more than 5,500 laboratory tests found no dangerous pathogen, Rospotrebnadzor said on Thursday, calling social-media reports of a second case false. In Yerevan an interdepartmental commission created by the prime minister’s decision held its first meeting the same evening.

  16. A tray of identical slate-blue cards standing in a row, one amber card turned the other way and leaning out of line.
    PoliticsAnalysis9 Oct

    MEPs pass the Georgia and Azerbaijan resolutions by 445 and 492 votes as Baku protests

    Strasbourg adopted the joint motion on Georgian Dream’s lawsuit to ban the opposition parties on Thursday by 445 votes to 37 with 97 abstentions, and the motion on Azerbaijan’s political prisoners by 492 to 23 with 60, by the minutes of the sitting. Within four hours the Milli Majlis called the Azerbaijan text a biased political action, and Georgian Dream’s Irakli Kadagishvili said the resolutions serve narrow political interests.

  17. A tall leaning stack of paper sheets on a sand-coloured table, two sheets lifted off the top and held by a single amber clip.
    PoliticsAnalysis9 Oct

    Six leaders sign two documents at Avaza as Tokayev counts 200 initiatives and few results

    The eighth consultative meeting of Central Asia’s heads of state, the first with Azerbaijan as a full member, closed on Thursday with a joint statement and a decision on its own rules, and handed the 2027 chair to Baku. Tokayev told the five that more than 200 initiatives have been raised since 2018 and only a small part carried out, while Putin, Pezeshkian and Lukashenko landed for Friday’s CIS summit.

  18. An open wooden gate in a stone wall at dusk, with a lit lantern over stone steps and a mountain valley beyond.
    SecurityBrief8 Oct

    Pashinyan calls the Shaki shooting an ordinary crime and keeps the trial in Armenia

    The Azerbaijani serviceman held over the 1 October shooting in Shaki will be tried in Armenia’s courts and, if sentenced to prison, will serve the term in Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan told the National Assembly on Wednesday, calling the incident “an ordinary criminal situation”. Defence Minister Suren Papikyan acknowledged shortcomings over the border crossing and said the man did not resist arrest, which to him shows he was no saboteur.

  19. An empty reception hall with a long polished table, two blue armchairs facing each other and a lit table lamp at sunset.
    EconomyBrief8 Oct

    Britain’s trade minister sits in Akorda as UK Export Finance takes a seat in Yerevan

    Tokayev received Lord Anas Sarwar, the UK Minister of State for Trade, on Wednesday and invited Prime Minister Andy Burnham to visit, citing trade up 83% in 2025 to over $1.6 billion and more than 500 British companies, by Akorda’s readout as Zakon carried it. The same evening the first Armenia-United Kingdom Business Forum drew about 2,000 participants and a UK Export Finance team to Yerevan, by Armenpress.