Author: Goga Akhalkatsi

Copenhagen (13/11 – 37.5) When Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as Sri Lanka’s president in July after a popular uprising ousted his predecessor, the South Asian island nation was engulfed in its worst economic meltdown in 75 years. Since then, President Wickremesinghe has managed to a keep a lid on mass protests, improve supplies of essentials and on Monday, secured a nearly $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that opens the door to restructuring about $58 billion of debt and receive funding from other lenders. He has done that despite a deeply unpopular government, his own party commanding just one…

In a dramatic development, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan issued a surprise joint statement on 7 December, outlining a prisoner exchange and mutual confidence-building measures, while committing to continue negotiations on normalizing relations and reaching a long-elusive peace treaty. The joint statement by the offices of the Armenian Prime Minister and Azerbaijani President opens the path to a full-fledged peace treaty, as European and American diplomats have indicated. Most notably, “for humanitarian reasons” and as a “gesture of goodwill,” Azerbaijan agreed to release 32 Armenian military personnel, while Armenia will free two Azerbaijanis. This will be the first mass prisoner-of-war exchange…

The South Caucasus entered global geopolitics after the end of the Cold War. The newly independent states of the region found themselves in uncharted waters of regional competition, rivalry and co-existence. The conflicts in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia added additional layers of complexity to regional geopolitics. However, by the late 1990s, the more or less stable regional security order emerged: the Turkey-Azerbaijan-Georgia partnership, supported by the United States, and the Russia-Armenia strategic alliance, supported by Iran. These transformations occurred within the unipolar world order, marked by U.S. hegemony and the expansion of the liberal international order, or as…

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, who is on a visit to Brussels, on Tuesday said the country had shown it was “ready” and “deserved” NATO membership. In his remarks over the country’s aspirations to join the alliance, Papuashvili noted “the Georgian people, who made sacrifices for international security, should hear clear answers from NATO”. The chief Georgian legislator also stressed the Georgian Government had done “a lot” to bring its institutions and systems in line with NATO standards. We have shown that we don’t want to be just a consumer of the security system, but we want to be a…

Frankfurt (18/12 – 14) That there are remarkable advantages in being ignored is not generally recognized. Central Asian countries, historically under the thumb of Moscow, all through the 70+ years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were more or less cut off from the outside world. There was little trade or other exchange. The USSR was in fact a grab-bag of ethnicities, religions and languages, controlled with an iron fist by Stalin and afterwards with unbroken dominance through subsequent regimes. Under Soviet management, Central Asia had stayed poor and ignored; it had not developed any hydrocarbon resources to lure…

Activities of the Georgian Ministry of Health, as well as reforms implemented and ongoing at the body were discussed on Thursday in a meeting between the Georgian Health Minister Zurab Azarashvili and Robin Dunnigan, the United States Ambassador to Georgia. The meeting focused on the prevention of infectious diseases in the country, their detection and further improvement of the quality of their management, the Ministry said. Azarashvili thanked Dunnigan and the American Government for their support to Georgia on the path to EU integration and for their contribution to the development of the country’s healthcare system. The Georgian official also…

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday discussed the positive decision of the European Commission to recommend the European Council to grant Georgia the European Union membership candidate status. In a phone conversation, Scholz positively assessed the progress achieved by Georgia on its path to European integration, which was confirmed by the Commission’s decision, and said his country would continue to support Georgia’s EU integration. Garibashvili said his country was waiting for the confirmation of the Commission’s positive recommendation from the European Council in December, which would take Georgia to “a new stage” of…

As widely reported, France has recently agreed to sell an advanced air defence system, the Thales GM 200, to Armenia. In addition, the two countries have signed a memorandum of understanding according to which France will sell Armenia the Mistral short-range air defence system sometime in the future. Armenia, however, is already covered by a joint air-defence system with Russia. This was agreed between the two countries in 2015, and in 2016 the Armenian parliament ratified the agreement. One might reasonably question why a NATO member is selling advanced technology to a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia’s…

Providing 20% of the EU heat demand with district heating by 2030 would save 24 billion cubic meters of gas, representing 32% of Europe’s Russian gas imports in 2022. Decisive EU action is needed to leverage this potential.  The Ukrainian crisis was the wake-up call we needed to finally grasp the urgency of reducing Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels, and address the decarbonisation of our heating and cooling sector. Space heating & cooling and hot water supply in buildings represent about 31% of the EU’s primary energy consumption with over 75% coming from fossil fuels. Despite a successful reduction of…

On December 6 a top U.S. diplomat made a visit to Azerbaijan against a backdrop of deteriorating relations between the two countries. The visit was received positively by Azerbaijani officials and media, but there is no sign that the hunt for “U.S. spies” in the country is about to let up. Elsewhere on the same day, President Ilham Aliyev issued a warning to France and India against arming Armenia, saying that doing so increases the chance of more war. Aliyev’s reception of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien was the first high-level meeting between the two countries since the sides…