Caucasus
Coverage across the South Caucasus — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
London’s war-risk list now covers the whole Black Sea, and the open water off Georgia’s ports is inside it
The Joint War Committee’s circular of 16 September lists the Black Sea “excluding territorial waters of adjoining countries other than Russia and Ukraine”; until then, in the Black Sea, the London market listed the coastal waters of Russia and Ukraine. Dunya, the Turkish business daily, puts war-risk premiums at 1% to 1.5% of a ship’s insured value, against 0.1% to 0.2% in normal conditions, which can add $150,000 to $300,000 to a 7-day voyage. The new line crosses routes that call at neither belligerent’s ports: KazTransOil, which owns the Batumi oil terminal, sent 293,000 tonnes of cargo toward that port in August.
A Tbilisi appeal court swaps a 5-year sentence in the '4 October' case for 1 year and a plea; Kobakhidze says repentance is the price of release
The Tbilisi Court of Appeal on Friday approved a procedural agreement between prosecutors and Nikoloz Gventsadze, a marketing specialist and former lecturer at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs who was convicted in May of attempting to seize a strategic facility and of group violence during the 4 October 2025 attempt to storm the presidential palace: his 5-year sentence becomes 1 year in prison and 3 suspended, and he leaves prison in early October, NewsGeorgia reported. The same afternoon Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists in Batumi that Georgia has no prisoners of conscience and that the state is ready to forgive "each of them, if there is repentance and admission on their part".
The Black Sea drone war reaches the Danube: a Turkish-owned freighter's captain is killed in the Bystre canal as Moscow claims cargo ships hit on 5 of the last 6 days
The Mariam M, a Tanzanian-flagged general cargo ship in the fleet of UBSM Shipping of Mersin, was hit by a drone in the Bystre canal of the Danube delta on Thursday morning on its way to load wheat at Reni. Ukraine's infrastructure ministry says the captain was killed and 3 crew wounded; Turkish maritime outlets put the dead at 2 and the wounded at 13. Russia's defence ministry, which names no ships, has claimed strikes on cargo vessels in Odesa, Chornomorsk and at sea on the Izmail approach on 5 of the last 6 days, on CAW's count of its statements.
A Tbilisi court gives Georgia's former security chief 13 years for bribes as parliament seats the fourth head of his old service
Grigol Liluashvili, who ran the State Security Service from October 2019 to April 2025, was convicted of taking bribes in an especially large amount as a group on all four episodes of the indictment, under article 338 of the Criminal Code, which carries 11 to 15 years. He denies the charges.
Georgia's parliament confirms Tamaz Borashvili as its fourth security chief in 18 months, 83 votes to none
Parliament approved Tamaz Borashvili as head of the State Security Service on Wednesday, Interpressnews reported at 12:36: 83 deputies voted for, none against, for a term the law sets at six years. He is the fourth holder of the post since April 2025. Anri Okhanashvili took it on 4 April 2025 and left on 23 August; Mamuka Mdinaradze was confirmed on 3 September 2025 and resigned on 21 April 2026; Gela Geladze followed and announced his resignation on Monday.
Brussels puts €12 billion on the Middle Corridor, and Yerevan's court clears the Trump route the same day
Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday that the EU will aim to crowd in up to €12 billion of public and private investment to link the South Caucasus and Central Asia directly to the European market, with a regional connectivity summit to be organised with Bulgaria's prime minister. In Yerevan the Constitutional Court's external relations department told News.am that the framework agreement with the United States on the Trump route is constitutional, and in Seoul Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked Korea to integrate the Middle Corridor with that route. The corridor is now priced by three parties that do not build it, and its physical bottlenecks did not move.
Georgia changes its security chief for the second time in 5 months; a career officer takes the service
Gela Geladze resigned as head of the State Security Service on Monday after four and a half months in the post, and prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze named his deputy, Tamaz Borashvili, to replace him, the first career officer of the service to head it in two decades, in the prime minister’s words. Geladze moves to a deputy minister’s post at the interior ministry he ran until April.
Georgia remands an opposition leader over a television line about the 1992 war, on treason and sabotage charges that carry up to 4 years
Tbilisi City Court on Saturday ordered Giorgi Baramidze, a former defence and interior minister and a member of the United National Movement’s political council, held in pretrial detention, a day after the Prosecutor General’s Office charged him with treason, ‘specifically sabotage’, over a July television interview in which he said Georgian fighters early in the 1992 to 1993 Abkhaz war took no prisoners and shot them. The charge carries up to 4 years; Baramidze told the court his words were misinterpreted.
Washington's Iranian-airline sweep lands in Kazakhstan as a ticket agent and in Tbilisi as 6 airlines
The US Treasury's designation of 27 Iranian airlines and their foreign enablers on Tuesday named one Central Asian company, Tour Invest of Kazakhstan, as Mahan Air's general sales agent. On Thursday Georgia's Civil Aviation Agency said 6 of the newly listed carriers fly between Georgia and Iran and that Tbilisi will act in full compliance with the sanctions regime. Astana had said nothing on the record by evening.
Georgia promises to double its ports by 2032 for a corridor whose shallowest link is on the other sea
Georgia's sea ports and terminals handled 13.7 million tonnes in the first 8 months of 2026, 24% more than a year earlier and the best figure in ten years, the economy minister told the Georgia International Maritime Forum in Batumi. The prime minister, at the same opening, set a ten-year target: railway capacity doubled, port capacity doubled, airport capacity tripled, about $7 billion by 2032. The route's narrowest section runs across Azerbaijan and the Caspian, at a Kazakh quay whose fenders are broken and whose water is falling, and there the only dated commitment is a dredging contract.
Baku's fuel for Armenia passes 21,000 tonnes as Saturday's 16 wagons leave Balajary
On Saturday 16 tank wagons carrying 977 tonnes of diesel left Balajary station for Boyuk Kasik, the Georgian border, and Armenia beyond it, APA reported. With them the running total of Azerbaijani fuel sent to Armenia stands at about 16,000 tonnes of diesel and about 5,000 tonnes of AI-92 and AI-95 petrol, by the agency's count. The same border crossing took Russian cargo in transit the same day: 355 tonnes of wheat, 180 tonnes of fertiliser and 138 tonnes of timber.
The pardoned Russian left Georgia for Yerevan the same evening the court gave him 7 days
Denis Kulanin flew out of Tbilisi on Friday evening and landed at Zvartnots, 8 days after President Mikheil Kavelashvili's pardon and hours after Tbilisi City Court granted the migration department's expulsion motion in a form that let him pick the country. The exit closes a thread that ran from a pardon through a dry hunger strike and a migration-centre cell to a courtroom, and it closes in Armenia, the destination on the ticket that expired while he sat in the centre on 1 September.
A Tbilisi court gives the pardoned Russian 7 days to leave Georgia for a country of his choosing
Tbilisi City Court has granted the migration department's motion on Denis Kulanin in full, and the motion carried its own exit: seven days to leave voluntarily, to any country he picks, with a handover to Russia off the table, as Sova and Meduza read the ruling. The order had not reached the migration service by Friday afternoon, his lawyer said, and he stays in its temporary placement centre until it does.
Tbilisi's file on a dead Abkhaz activist holds three detainees and two theories
Daur Buava, 30, who left Tkvarcheli for Tbilisi in 2021 and made TikTok videos about Abkhazia joining Georgia, was found dead in a rented flat in Didi Digomi on 27 August. A week on, the Interior Ministry's file holds three detainees and two articles of the criminal code, the drugs version the ministry gave on 29 August is disputed by his lawyer, and Wednesday's protest in Tbilisi carried the line “Daur was killed”.
Baku's fuel for Armenia nears 20,000 tonnes, and every wagon still goes through Georgia
Another 17 tank wagons of Azerbaijani diesel leave Baku's Bilajari yard for the Georgian border today. The running total the Baku press prints, near 15,000 tonnes of diesel and 5,000 of petrol, is small against Armenia's import book and large as a fact: the peace dividend is counted in wagons, and its only track runs through a third country.
Tbilisi asks a court to send its pardoned Russian back to Russia
The Migration Department filed a petition with Tbilisi City Court on Tuesday to expel Denis Kulanin to Russia, 2 days after the same court allowed him to leave for a third country. He is still in the migration centre with a ticket to Yerevan he cannot use.
A pardoned Russian's ticket out of Georgia expires in a migration cell
Denis Kulanin, released from a protest-case sentence by presidential pardon on 28 August, spent 1 September in Tbilisi's temporary migrant detention center while a ticket to Yerevan bought for him went unused. The migration service wants a court-ordered deportation, and voluntary exit is blocked until a judge rules.
Georgia's president pardons 9 from the protest cells
Mikheil Kavelashvili pardoned 9 people jailed across three waves of Georgian protest, from the 2024 marches against the foreign-agents law to last October's unrest, in an act the ruling party framed as answered petitions.
The ADB puts $400 million behind the region's border queues
The Asian Development Bank approved on Thursday a $400 million regional facility, BUILD, to modernise border crossings across the 11 CAREC countries, with up to $50 million per project over 10 years. The priority projects named so far are Tajik: Fotehobod-Oybek on the Uzbek border, Sarazm and Navbunyod.
Georgia's jailed ex-premier turns into a recruitment target
Irma Inashvili publicly invited Irakli Garibashvili to join her Alliance of Patriots: a political prisoner, in her reading, should answer with politics. The ruling party answers his letters from jail with one word, masquerade.