Caucasus
Coverage across the South Caucasus — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Georgia’s party-ban suit goes to the full court as Kos calls the candidacy paper-only
The Constitutional Court’s First Chamber has referred Georgian Dream’s lawsuit to ban the opposition parties to the court’s plenum, in a ruling taken without an oral hearing on 6 October that cannot be appealed. That evening Marta Kos called Georgia “a candidate country only on paper”, and the European Parliament debates the attempt to ban them on Wednesday with a vote on Thursday.
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.
The Kremlin confirms a Caspian summit on Friday that Turkmenistan’s programme post omits
Vladimir Putin will speak on 9 October at a Caspian Ecological Summit in Turkmenistan where all five Caspian leaders are to speak and a declaration on the sea’s ecological problems, shallowing included, is expected, his aide Yuri Ushakov said on Tuesday evening. The CIS foreign ministers meet at Avaza on Wednesday with Sergei Lavrov, and the Caspian states’ ministers meet the same day, by the state portal’s programme.
The Middle Corridor is promised billions while its Caspian ferries sail part-empty
Brussels plans to attract up to €12 billion for the Middle Corridor. The sea at its centre has dropped about 2.5 metres in 30 years, Azerbaijan’s Institute of Geography says, and ferries leaving Kazakhstan already sail with part of their cargo space empty. On Wednesday the ministers of the five shore states met in Avaza to discuss it.
Baku signs four documents with London on green energy and transport links
Azerbaijan and the United Kingdom signed the protocol of the 8th session of their joint intergovernmental commission and three documents on green energy, transport links and urban mobility in Baku on Tuesday, Azertag reported, with energy minister Parviz Shahbazov and the UK trade minister Lord Anas Sarwar signing, and Ilham Aliyev received Sarwar with a letter from prime minister Andy Burnham.
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.
Georgian Dream dismisses the European Parliament’s resolution a day before the debate
Every resolution the European Parliament has adopted on Georgia in recent times is not worth the price of the paper it could be printed on, the chair of parliament’s legal affairs committee Archil Gorduladze said on Tuesday, a day before MEPs debate attempts by Georgian Dream to ban opposition parties and two days before they vote on a resolution.
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.
Georgia’s 2027 budget reaches committee at 37.56 billion lari and a 2.5% deficit
The first version of Georgia’s 2027 state budget began its committee readings on Monday with consolidated receipts of 37.531 billion lari, 29.52 billion of them taxes, and spending of 37.562 billion, first deputy finance minister Giorgi Kakauridze told the education committee. It assumes 5% real growth, nominal GDP above 126 billion lari, a deficit of 2.5% of GDP and government debt at 31.6%.
Avaza’s week has a Caspian summit in one portal post and none in the programme
Turkmenistan’s state portal, turkmenistan.gov.tm, gives two accounts of the 3 days that open in Avaza on Wednesday. Its programme has the Caspian ministers on 7 October, the heads of state of Central Asia and Azerbaijan on 8 October and the CIS council on 9 October. Its post on Tokayev’s attendance adds a Caspian Ecological Summit, dated 9 October by an Ashgabat outlet that expects Putin and Pezeshkian.
Four German party foundations stop work in Georgia after Tbilisi rejects their grants
The Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Naumann foundations closed their Tbilisi offices on 30 September after the government rejected on 28 July the grant applications the Law on Grants obliges them to file, and the Heinrich Böll and Friedrich Ebert foundations have followed, JAMnews reported on 2 and 3 October. Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said foreign political parties and their foundations “have no political mission to carry out in Georgia”.
Aliyev puts 9 billion manat on defence and tells his party Azerbaijan joins no camp
At the eighth congress of his New Azerbaijan Party on Friday, President Ilham Aliyev said the 2027 budget sets aside about 9 billion manat, $5.2 billion by Trend’s conversion, for military and security spending, that currency reserves have reached $90 billion, about 20 times the external debt, and that Azerbaijan “does not join any camp and will not”. The speech is a doctrine with a price list attached.
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.
Tbilisi says free power to Abkhazia cost Enguri 64 million lari and its 2025 profit
Georgia’s fiscal risks analysis for 2027 counts 64 million lari that Enguri lost in 2025 by supplying Abkhazia free, up from 45 million in 2024, bm.ge reported on Friday. The plant sent 1.465 billion kWh there, sold 1.606 billion at home and exported 309.2 million, and the ministry says it would have made a 61 million lari profit instead of losing 3.7 million.
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.
The UK sanctions 4 Georgians for Kremlin disinformation and names Tskhinvali’s leaders
Britain’s package of 1 October lists 23 individuals and entities and 8 ships. Among them are 7 people “involved in spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation”, 4 of them Georgian nationals, and the serving and former heads of the Russian-installed authority in South Ossetia. The same evening a few dozen people rallied in Tbilisi’s Rike Park for Mikheil Saakashvili’s release, against the interior ministry’s refusal.
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.
Baku delays its e-transfer reporting rule to January and rewrites the thresholds
A day before Azerbaijan's banks were to start reporting every electronic transfer by a client whose transfers had passed 20,000 manat in a year, the Financial Monitoring Service moved the start to 1 January 2027 and rewrote the test. Reporting will follow any single transfer of 20,000 manat or more and, for individuals, every further transfer in a month once the month's total passes 50,000 manat.
Guler expects Kyrgyz and Kazakh troops at larger drills as 3 armies train in Khojavend
The Strength of Unity 2026 exercise of Azerbaijan, Türkiye and Uzbekistan held its observer day at the Qizilqaya range in Khojavend district on Thursday, with the participating countries' defence ministers and chiefs of general staff present, Azerbaijan's defence ministry said. Türkiye's Yasar Guler said he believes the Kyrgyz and the Kazakhs will join for larger exercises, and Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan signed a 2027 military cooperation plan in Baku.