Caucasus
Coverage across the South Caucasus — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Three ministers answer the Irkutsk laboratory death as Moscow clears 90% of contacts
The death of a laboratory worker at Irkutsk’s anti-plague institute, pneumonia of unspecified etiology to Rospotrebnadzor and suspected pneumonic plague to ECDC, drew three answers on Wednesday: Mongolia’s health minister said temperatures are taken at the border and isolation rooms stand ready, Armenia’s minister told parliament arrivals face enhanced checks, and Georgia’s said there is no reason for panic. Moscow reported more than 90% of contacts released from observation.
Avaza’s first day ends with four CIS decisions and no word on the Caspian ministers
The CIS foreign ministers signed four documents at Avaza on Wednesday, among them a decision making 2029 the Commonwealth’s transport year, and fixed their next council for Bishkek in April 2027. Listed for the same day in the host’s programme, the Caspian states’ ministers had no readout on Turkmenistan’s state portal, TDH, the foreign ministry’s site or News Central Asia by Thursday morning as the presidents landed.
The EAEU’s economic partnership with the UAE takes effect with duties cut on 85% of lines
The agreement on economic partnership between the Eurasian Economic Union, its member states and the United Arab Emirates entered into force on 6 October, Kazakhstan’s trade and integration ministry said as Kazinform carried it at 17:06. It abolishes or lowers import duties on more than 85% of the tariff nomenclature. Signed in St Petersburg on 27 June 2025, it was ratified by Kazakhstan in July.
Pashinyan expects the Turkish border to open and keeps Russia’s reactor offer in play
The Armenia-Türkiye border is expected to open in the near future alongside the TRIPP project, with rail links to Azerbaijan and Türkiye to follow, Nikol Pashinyan told the first Armenia-UK Business Forum in Yerevan on 6 October, by Armenpress’s account. The same evening he said no final decision had been taken on a new nuclear plant’s technology and the Russian option is not excluded.
Pashinyan removes the security deputy who oversaw the border troops, with no reason given
Nikol Pashinyan dismissed Davit Sanamyan as deputy director of the National Security Service on Monday by a decree that gives no reason, Armenpress reported, and Azatutyun wrote that the major general coordinated and oversaw the service’s border troops. An Azerbaijani serviceman crossed into Syunik province and shot a woman in her home in the settlement of Shaki on 1 October.
Baku talks to Washington and Yerevan to Tehran about the same peace track on one day
Azerbaijan’s foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the strategic partnership and the normalisation process with Armenia by telephone on Monday, Baku’s foreign ministry said, while Armenia’s foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan was received by Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran and presented progress on the TRIPP route, by Yerevan’s readout.
An Armenian court remands the Azerbaijani soldier taken at Shaki for 2 months on 5 charges
The Investigative Committee said on Friday that Nasim Musaev, the Azerbaijani conscript accused of shooting a woman in her home in the Syunik village of Shaki on Thursday, was remanded in custody for 2 months. Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office is prosecuting him under 5 articles: illegal border crossing, smuggling of military goods or firearms, illegal arms trafficking, unlawful entry into a dwelling and grave harm to health.
At the EAEU council, Lukashenko asks Armenia where its brandy will go if it chooses the EU
The Eurasian Intergovernmental Council met in Minsk on Friday under Kazakhstan’s chairmanship, with Pashinyan on a video link. Bektenov put the union’s first-half growth at 1.1% and its investment at $244.5 billion, Mishustin said mutual trade rose 10% from January to July, and Lukashenko told the heads of delegations that Armenia should work out where its brandy and fruit will go before it hurries to the EU.
An Azerbaijani conscript who left his unit is held in Armenia, accused of shooting a woman
A serviceman who walked out of an Azerbaijani unit in the Lachin district on 26 September is accused of entering a house in the Syunik village of Shaki on Thursday and shooting the woman who found him in the leg. He was detained 90 minutes later. The prosecutors general of Armenia and Azerbaijan issued statements that match on his absence from his unit and open different cases.
Pashinyan: a modular reactor will not be enough as Armenia's surplus turns to deficit
Armenia had surplus electricity a year and 4 months ago and now has a deficit because the investment programmes already approved absorb all of it, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told a briefing on Thursday, and the modular nuclear plant the government had settled on will most likely not be enough. He also said Yerevan has had no signal of a rise in the price of Russian gas.
Pashinyan tells Rosatom the new reactor will be chosen on price, safety, dates and guarantees
Nikol Pashinyan received Rosatom’s director general Alexei Likhachev on Tuesday and discussed the extension of the second unit of the Armenian nuclear plant and Russia’s proposals for a new unit, his office said. The government is still weighing offers from international partners and will decide soon, and the final decision “will be of an exclusively economic nature, taking account of price, quality, safety, timing and guarantees”.
Russia caps cash roubles for 7 neighbours at 1 million a head and bans firms from carrying any
A decree Vladimir Putin signed on Tuesday bans anyone from carrying more than 1 million roubles in cash out of Russia into the other 4 members of the Eurasian Economic Union, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. Companies and sole traders may carry none, with 3 exceptions. The $100,000 ceiling that had applied since April is gone, and cash above the limit is confiscated at the border.
The World Bank prices the corridor at $55 billion to 2040, with $30 billion of it beyond the track
A World Bank report published on Monday says the Trans-Caspian corridor’s development could triple its volumes, halve its travel times, add 3.3% to the 9 countries’ GDP and create 2 million jobs by 2040. The bill it attaches is at least $25 billion of physical infrastructure and an estimated $30 billion of enabling investment. With reforms, the Bank says, the volumes would quadruple.
PACE calls Armenia’s June vote a real choice made under Russian pressure of a new scale
Observers of the Council of Europe’s assembly, led by Damien Cottier of Switzerland, found that the 7 June election gave voters a real choice in a well-run process, under Russian interference on a scale their report says no member state has seen before, Armenian media reported on Monday as the assembly sat in Strasbourg. That plenary also elected Hayk Konjoryan, a vice-speaker of Armenia’s parliament, one of the assembly’s vice-presidents.
Russian gas flows to Armenia again after 10 days of pipeline work: 2.7 billion cubic metres a year through one line across Georgia while Simonyan names four suppliers for the future
Gazprom Armenia said gas deliveries through the North Caucasus-Transcaucasia trunk pipeline resumed on 25 September after a suspension “from 15 September” for planned maintenance and repair on the Russian section, Interfax reported at 12:20 Moscow time. The line carried about 2.7 billion cubic metres to Armenia in 2025, beside the roughly 476 million a year that arrive from Iran in the gas-for-electricity swap, and Interfax put the contract price at $177.5 per 1,000 cubic metres to the end of 2026 or the start of 2027; Security Council secretary Alen Simonyan had given $165 at the border on 16 September, frozen since 2019.
Three Caucasus capitals sell one corridor at the UN in a day: Kobakhidze’s $7 billion to 2032, Pashinyan’s 26% rising to 49%, and Bayramov’s direct dialogue with Mirzoyan
Irakli Kobakhidze told the UN General Assembly on Thursday that Georgia will put $7 billion into its transit infrastructure by 2032, the railway’s modernisation, new highways, the Anaklia deep-water port, a new international airport for Tbilisi and a fibre-optic cable under the Black Sea, and that Georgia “reaffirms its readiness to maintain dialogue with all international partners willing to work with us on the basis of mutual respect and sovereign equality”; the words European Union did not occur in the speech, Novosti Gruzii noted on Friday morning, and 20% of the country “remains under the occupation of the Russian Federation”. The same day Nikol Pashinyan told the hall that Armenia “will initially have a 26 percent stake in the TRIPP Development Company” and that “in the 50th year, the Republic of Armenia’s share will become 49 percent”, Armenpress reported at 05:24 on Friday, and on the margins Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan reviewed the progress since the Washington summit and “agreed to continue direct dialogue”, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry said through Report.az at 08:16.
The EU Council adopts 2 years of duty-free entry for about 80% of Armenia’s exports, the only such regime for a country with neither candidate status nor a free-trade area with the EU
The Council of the European Union formally adopted on Thursday the temporary trade-liberalisation measures for Armenian goods, suspending import duties on about 80% of Armenia’s exports to the EU for 2 years from the day after the regulation’s publication in the Official Journal, Armenpress reported at 14:34. Ireland’s foreign minister Helen McEntee, for the presidency: “We are stepping up our support for Armenia and its people, who have clearly chosen a pro-European path in spite of foreign pressures. Today’s decision will help Armenia’s economy hit by trade restrictions”. Ani Badalyan, the foreign ministry’s spokeswoman, said Armenia becomes the only country that, “without EU candidate status or a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area agreement with the EU, receives such an economic benefit”.
Erdoğan receives Pashinyan at Türkevi in New York, backs normalisation in trade and transport and invites him to the COP31 leaders’ summit
President Erdoğan received Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at Türkevi in New York on Wednesday, with foreign minister Hakan Fidan beside him, and told him Türkiye supported “the normalisation process in bilateral trade and transport”, welcomed “reciprocal steps in the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia” and invited him to the COP31 leaders’ summit Türkiye will host, Hürriyet reported at 20:27 Istanbul time. Armenia’s side went into the meeting saying it “looks forward to border opening, launch of rail connectivity with Türkiye”, Armenpress reported at midday, and came out of it, in Arka’s headline, with both sides seeing a need to “stimulate trade and economic ties”.
The ADB and the EBRD publish their autumn forecasts a day apart: Central Asia and Mongolia grow 5.8% on one count while the Caucasus slips on the other
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development put Central Asia and Mongolia at 5.8% growth in 2026 and 5.3% in 2027 in its Regional Economic Prospects published on Thursday: Kyrgyzstan 8.7% this year, Tajikistan 7.9%, Uzbekistan 7.5%, Mongolia and Turkmenistan 6.3%, Kazakhstan 4.7%. The Asian Development Bank’s September Outlook, published on Wednesday, raised Uzbekistan to 7.0% from 6.7% after an 8.5% first half and Georgia to 6.3% from 5.5%, cut Tajikistan to 7.0% from 7.3% and Azerbaijan to 1.6% from 2.0%, and left Kazakhstan at 4.8%, Kyrgyzstan at 8.9%, Turkmenistan at 6.3%, Armenia at 5.0% and Mongolia at 5.7%. Its subregion, the Caucasus and Central and West Asia, slips to 3.7% for 2026 and 4.1% for 2027, a tenth of a point down on July on both years.
Pashinyan says Armenia is talking to 5 countries about a new nuclear plant, with Rosatom’s 1,200 MW study already in Yerevan and Metsamor’s life running to 2026
Armenia is negotiating with the United States, Russia, China, France and South Korea over a new nuclear power plant and “is looking for the best offer to start construction”, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a panel of the Concordia summit in New York, Arka reported on Wednesday at 14:27. Metsamor supplies up to 40% of the country’s electricity, its operating life has been extended to 2026 and work is under way on a further extension of 10 years; a preliminary feasibility study by Rosatom for a new 1,200 MW unit is already before the Armenian side, and the plan is to build the new plant within 8 to 10 years.