Georgian Parties Fail to Link Domestic Prosperity With a Consistent Foreign Policy (Devi Dumbadze, The Jamestown Foundation)

Days after Russia completed its annual military exercise Kavkaz 2016, centered on the southern part of the country and the Black Sea area and reportedly involving 120,000 service personnel (seeEDM, September 15), Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili delivered a pre-election speech at the United Nations General Assembly (Civil Georgia, September 22). With Georgia’s October 8 parliamentary elections nearing, campaigns are in high gear. Kvirikashvili used his opportunity in the international spotlight to delineate an action plan that is nearly identical with his party Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia’s (GDDG) domestic platform (Civil.ge, September 22). He only briefly addressed the main national security issue: Russia occupies 20 percent of Georgian territory, and human rights violations against Georgia’s citizens there are ongoing (Civil Georgia, September 17).

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Is Georgia Headed Toward Post-Election Violence? (Vasili Rukhadze, The Jamestown Foundation)

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who also serves as the chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia party (GDDG), stated on September 14 that the formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM) was trying to radicalize the country’s political situation through its affiliate organizations. He asserted that UNM was setting up new groups and was planning to block the exits and entrances of polling stations to artificially create tensions. The prime minister’s statement followed Interior Minister Giorgi Mgebrishvili’s statement a day earlier, who said that, based on his information, “some political parties [intended] certain provocations during and after the elections” (Civil Georgia, September 14). Nationwide parliamentary elections are scheduled in Georgia for October 8.

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NATO’s New Force Posture in the Baltic Region: Pluses and Minuses (Part Two) (Vladimir Socor, The Jamestown Foundation)

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Amidst His Conflict With Russian Security Services, Kadyrov Seeks Putin’s Support (Valery Dzutsati, The Jamestown Foundation)

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Moscow Postpones Decisions on State Armaments Program 2025 (Roger McDermott, The Jamestown Foundation)

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Generational Change in Central Asia about More Than Just Leaders (Paul Goble, The Jamestown Foundation)

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Turkey-Russia Rapprochement and Prospects for ‘Turkish Stream’ (The Jamestown Foundation)

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Cautious Belarus-Poland Normalization Reflects Changing Regional Patterns (The Jamestown Foundation)

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China Quietly Displacing Both Russia and US From Central Asia (The Jamestown Foundation)

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Moscow ‘Bypassing’ Armenia to Reach Azerbaijan, Iran and India (Paul Goble, The Jamestown Foundation)

Perhaps the most important geopolitical development of mid-July 2016 was not the continuing conflict in the South China Sea, the failed coup in Turkey, or terrorist violence in France—all of which attracted considerable international attention—but rather the quiet signing, in Moscow, of an agreement by Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani and Indian officials to open a north-south rail line in the Caucasus. That accord will not only link those three countries, but ultimately tie together rail systems from India, by ship to Iran (see EDM, December 4, 2015), and on to Europe, via Azerbaijan and Russia. This will have profound consequences for the states and territories along its route. However, the country most immediately and negatively affected by this new rail system will be Armenia, which is not a party to these arrangements (Rusarminfo.ru, July 11).

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Turkey’s Failed Coup: Motivations and Implications (Zaur Shiriyev, The Jamestown Foundation)

The attempted coup by factions of the Turkish military calling themselves the “Turkish Peace Council” backfired and failed in less than 24 hours. Friday’s abortive takeover bid was led by a group of military officials with influence in the Air Force and Gendarmerie; and the center of the action was the Akıncı Air Base, near the capital city of Ankara.

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Georgia Receives ‘Maximum Possible’ at NATO’s Warsaw Summit (Giorgi Menabde, The Jamestown Foundation)

Several paragraphs of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) final Warsaw Summit communiqué (July 9) refer to long-time NATO-aspirant Georgia (Nato.int, July 9).

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NATO Can Refloat Romania’s Black Sea Naval Initiative (Part One) (Vladimir Socor, The Jamestown Foundation)

It was a summit of modest expectations and modest results for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Warsaw on July 8–9. These results are of an interim nature: building blocks for further decisions at upcoming ministerial meetings, not waiting until the next summit. The Warsaw results do not, as yet, correlate with the growth in Russia’s capacity to threaten, intimidate, or subvert the Alliance generally and its eastern—now “frontline”—member countries in particular.

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Major Mudslide Forces Consideration of Alternative Transportation Routes Across Great Caucasus Ridge (Valery Dzutsati, The Jamestown Foundation)

On June 23, the Terek River flooded and destroyed part of the Georgian Military Highway (Voyenno-Gruzinskaya doroga). The highway, which connects Russia to Georgia and Armenia, was closed. The flood caused mudslides and destroyed an estimated 500–600 meters of the highway, blocking the narrow road in the mountains on the Georgian side of the border. On July 5, the Georgian authorities finally opened a temporary route for all-wheel-drive passenger cars. A large group of Armenians stranded on the blocked highway sheltered in a temporary tent camp until a plane from the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations evacuated them to Yerevan (Newsarmenia.am, July 4).

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Dialogue With Russia Produces Universal Frustration (Pavel K. Baev, The Jamestown Foundation)

The idea of engaging in more dialogue with Russia is eagerly accepted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is being pursued by the United States, is cultivated by the Chinese leadership, and has again become embraced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The latter even swallowed his pride and offered an elliptic apology for his country’s air force having shot down a Russian bomber that violated Turkish airspace from Syria last November. The Russian-Turkish quarrel was declared finished—to the surprise of many Russians (Kommersant, July 15). A day after the attempted military coup in Turkey (July 15–16), President Vladimir Putin expressed his support for Turkey, during a phone conversation with Erdogan. The two leaders are expected to meet face to face at the beginning of August (Anadolu Agency, July 17). Putin has good reasons to worry about the threat of a palace coup at home and has been furiously reshuffling the overgrown security services.

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Ukraine’s Resilience Strengthens, Though Regional Cohesion Risks Remain (The Jamestown Foundation)

President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials frequently refer to Ukraine’s weak social cohesion, thereby justifying the notion that Russia is intervening in this allegedly ungovernable weak state to protect its clientele groups there. During this year’s St. Petersburg Economic Forum (June 16–18), Putin indirectly accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of acting to “scare the Russian-speaking population of southeastern Ukraine and Crimea” and he posited that Moscow “simply had to take measures to protect certain social groups” in Ukraine (Kremlin.ru, June 17).

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Cossacks and Moscow Still Disagree Over What It Means to Be a Cossack (The Jamestown Foundation)

Cossacks in Ingushetia have appealed to the Terek Cossack Force to accept them as members. The latter is expected to make its decision by this fall. The Cossacks of Ingushetia have asked to become members of the Terek Cossack force for years, so far unsuccessfully. According to Cossack traditions, Cossacks are supposed to belong to the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ingush, as Muslims, were rejected. In 2013, Vasily Svetlichny became the head of the newly established Sunzha Cossack District in Ingushetia. According to Svetlichny, the Sunzha Cossack District has only about 300 members, and its small size disqualifies it from becoming an officially registered Cossack organization, according to existing Russian laws (Kavkazskaya Politika, July 5). However, a much larger Cossack organization in Ingushetia made up of ethnic Ingush may be behind Svetlichny. Earlier, on February 3, Cossacks from Stavropol met Ingushetia’s governor, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and offered to cooperate with the Ingush Cossacks, signaling that Muslim Cossacks may be acceptable to some (Nazaccent.ru, February 4).

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Russia Wanders the War Zones and Political Badlands of the Middle East (The Jamestown Foundation)

Russia’s military intervention in Syria is clearly not going well. Last Friday (July 8), another helicopter was reportedly shot down near Palmyra, and the Russian Ministry of Defense, after an initial denial, had to admit that the downed aircraft was not a Syrian Mi-25, but a Russian Mi-35M on a combat mission from the Khmeimym airbase near Latakia (Kommersant, July 11). President Vladimir Putin felt obliged to interrupt his “disappearing act” and made a pilgrimage to the remote Valaam Monastery in Karelia, where he asked the resident Orthodox monks to pray for the two pilots who lost their lives (Kremlin.ru, July 11). Prayers were not the full extent of the Russian response, however. On Monday, six long-range Tu-22M3 bombers delivered a strike on an Islamic State (IS) camp, allegedly destroying three tanks (Gazeta.ru, July 12). This one-off resort to heavy bombing provides little reassurance: it was to be expected that the small grouping of Russian Aerospace Forces presently involved in high-risk operations and dealing with strained logistics would suffer new casualties.

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Russia’s Karabakh Mediation Efforts Show Early Hints of Promise (Gulshan Pashayeva, The Jamestown Foundation)

Russia is working hard to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters in Yerevan, on July 4 (Trend, July 4). Her statement alluded to that day’s meeting held between Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Specifically, Lavrov and Nalbandian had discussed the steps being undertaken to implement the agreements on resolving the Karabakh conflict, which were reached earlier this year in Vienna and St. Petersburg (Mfa.am, July 4).

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A Change in Turkish-Russian Relations: What Sort of Rapprochement? (Zaur Shiriyev, The Jamestown Foundation)

The end of the six-year diplomatic stalemate between Israel and Turkey, announced on June 27 (Hurriyet Daily News, June 28), also heralded a shift on another front. Seven months after the start of the crisis in Turkish-Russian relations, a second letter from the Turkish leadership addressed to the Kremlin (the first one was sent in early June) has finally opened the way toward rapprochement (Hurriyet Daily News, TASS, June 27).

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