Caucasus
Coverage across the South Caucasus — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Georgia's jailed ex-premier gets a new charge priced at 11 to 15 years
Prosecutors charged Irakli Garibashvili on Monday with taking a 750,000 lari bribe, about $290,000, over classified military-hospital procurement during his premiership. Four days earlier he wrote from prison that his father was being threatened with arrest.
Tashkent and Tbilisi retire the paper permit
Uzbekistan and Georgia have switched international road haulage to electronic permits, covering bilateral runs, transit and third-country shipments alike, under a memorandum signed during Mirziyoyev's visit to Georgia in July. Tashkent's transport ministry announced the launch this week.
Georgia's jailed ex-premier says the pressure now reaches his father
Irakli Gharibashvili, 8 months in custody, has sent a third statement out of prison. In a letter passed through an intermediary, netgazeti reports, he describes pressure to give evidence and a threat of arrest hanging over his 65-year-old father.
Georgia's new refinery runs its first Kazakh crude
Kulevi took 5,500 tonnes of Kazakh crude in July, the first Kazakhstan has ever sold into Georgia, at $3.2 million. The operator says August cargoes and Libyan barrels will finish replacing Russian supply. For Astana the volume is a rounding error. For Tbilisi, direction.
The Middle Corridor is one row in Washington's tariff table
Caucasus and Central Asia holds 4 names together: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, filed under Belt-and-Road Overland Nodes. That label does more work than any of the coverage that trickled into regional media this week.
Washington's transshipment map reaches the region, and Tbilisi demands facts
A White House report on Chinese tariff evasion places Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in one category of small transit economies, and on Tuesday Georgia's prime minister answered it: show a fact.
The western workaround acquires statistics at Batumi
Batumi port moved more than 4 million tonnes in the first half of 2026, up 8%, its press service said on 30 July. The port and its oil terminal are run by KazTransOil’s Georgian subsidiary, which makes the figure a Kazakh number as much as a Georgian one.
The ADB puts $250 million into the road around Tbilisi
The Asian Development Bank approved a $250 million loan on 30 July for an 18.9-kilometre four-lane bypass of the Georgian capital, framing it as freight relief on the corridor that links Central Asia to Europe.
Georgia's surrogacy boom runs on women recruited from Central Asia
An Oxford study published on 16 June maps a quiet labour chain. Clinics in Georgia, short of local surrogates since 2022, now recruit women from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan through Instagram and TikTok. The pregnancies are sold as paid work, and the controls around them sit outside the law.
Mirziyoyev ends a 23-year pause in Tbilisi, and Georgia gains a second Central Asian partner
The first Uzbek state visit to Georgia since 2003 brought a declaration of strategic partnership, Georgia’s highest state award and a package of agreements. Kazakhstan signed its own strategic partnership with Tbilisi three days earlier. The western gate of the Middle Corridor is signing up its shippers.
Kazakhstan and Georgia sign a strategic partnership, and the Middle Corridor gets a spine
Kazakhstan and Georgia signed a strategic partnership in Astana on 29 June, with the Trans-Caspian corridor at its centre. It binds the two ends of the route that carries Central Asian goods to Europe without crossing Russia, and it quietly extends Kazakhstan into the Caucasus by way of that corridor.
Kyrgyzstan and Georgia reach for a Black Sea link as the China railway advances
On the first visit to Bishkek by a Georgian head of government, Prime Minister Kobakhidze and President Japarov agreed to connect the new China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway to Georgia’s Black Sea ports. The bet is that the Middle Corridor outlasts the war that briefly made it fashionable.
The scramble for the Caucasus, from Washington’s bill to a Chinese-built port
In one week Washington moved against Chinese and Russian sway in Georgia, the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Georgia signed a declaration in Istanbul, and a Chinese consortium kept its grip on Georgia’s flagship port. The Caucasus is being contested in real time.
Turkmenistan and Georgia push trade and transit ties in Tbilisi
Turkmen and Georgian officials met in Tbilisi on 10 June to expand trade, investment and transit, with Georgian Railway and Black Sea ports at the centre of the talks.
US House passes a bill on Chinese and Russian influence in Georgia
The US House passed the Countering China’s Control of the Caucasus Act on 8 June, ordering a classified report on Russian and Chinese intelligence activity in Georgia. It is the sharpest sign yet of Washington’s rift with Tbilisi.
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BTK goes full throttle: the upgraded Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway enters operation
Capacity jumped from 1 to 5 million tonnes a year. The Middle Corridor's western spine is no longer a bottleneck.
Baku-Supsa pipeline returns: Kazakhstan oil joins the rerouting
A deal signed during Kobakhidze’s Baku visit on 18 May restores a dormant Caspian export route, and Astana is already looking at it