Guri Bakradze Ph.D candidate in Political Philosophy Introduction Discussion of the country’s national idea is quite frequent in academic and political circles of contemporary Russia (and not only), particularly on how to define national idea, whether it should become an ideology and on what grounds. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, once communist ideology suffered complete failure and the post-Soviet space was consumed by a long-term crisis, in addition to military, political and economic challenges, absence of a unifying idea became one of the main problems of Russian Federation – the legal successor of the Soviet Union. Russian President…
Author: rd_adm
On October 21th, a public discussion on Foreign Policy Priorities after the Parliamentary Elections was held at the Caucasian House. The chief legal adviser to the President of Georgia Anna Dolidze, a political scientist and journalist Zviad Avaliani and the founder of the Georgian Institute of Politics Kornely Kakachia presented reports. The event was moderated by the executive director of the Caucasian House Giorgi Kanashvili. Anna Dolidze generally spoke about the current political processes in the region, tendencies and the challenges that Georgia faces nowadays. Zviad Avaliani emphasized on power configuration established after the elections and expressed some projections in…
Ognjen Gogic Political analyst based in Belgrade Transferring Kosovo case form the UN to the EU After Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, Serbian Government announced its readiness to employ all available political, diplomatic and legal means in order to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. In order to make more plausible its argument that Kosovo’s act was illegal, Serbia decided to transfer the issue to the International Court of Justice, anticipating that a favorable verdict would discourage other states from recognizing Kosovo’s independence. Accordingly, in October 2008, upon Serbia’s request, the United Nations General Assembly voted…
Giorgi Kanashvili Caucasian House – The outcome of the elections is unlikely to have any significant impact on the Russian-Georgian relations. – Georgia will continue its “small steps” policy towards the conflict regions. No breakthrough or bold and decisive initiatives should be expected here anytime soon. – The formal annexation of South Ossetia by Russia has been postponed indefinitely. The forthcoming “presidential elections” in South Ossetia will make no difference to the situation. – The Georgian policy towards North Caucasus will remain as lethargic as ever. – Russia’s potential next steps following the elections: prospects of visa-free travel between the…
Stepan Goncharov Researcher, “Levada – Centre” Elections to the State Duma of 7th convocation were held at the lowest turnout in the recent history of Russia. According to opinions of the Russians themselves, the elections were “boring”, “predictable”, “uncontested”. As they say, there was no any intrigue or feeling of the opportunity to influence the future even before the voting. It is very much possible that this was what the authorities were counting on: many were not well-informed about the place of voting, about the new proportional electoral system. In opinion of many Russians, the ritual of voting had lost…
Guri Bakradze Ph.D candidate in Political Philosophy Introduction On June 27 2016, Turkish President RecepTayyip Erdogan sent a letter to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, in which he expressed his concern regarding the Russian Su-24 attack aircraft that was shot down by a Turkish interceptor on November 24 2015, extended condolences to the pilot’s family and offered an apology.[1]This fact, given the extremely tense air between Russia and Turkey for 7 months following the plane’s takedown, might turn into the first step of restoring the good relations between the two countries. As it is widely known, an official apology is…
Sergey Minasyan, Doctor of Political Sciences Deputy Director of the Caucasus Institute In the second half of July 2016 Armenia was shaken by deep internal political crisis. In early morning 17th of July an armed group of followers of Jirair Sefilian, a former active participant of military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh, took over a police station in Erebuni, killing a policeman and injuring several others. Several other policemen, including high level police officials, were taken hostage; the death of another policeman later was caused by the sniper fire. The armed group requested from the authorities to release their leader, who…
Sergey Minasyan Doctor of sciences, political studies Deputy Director of the Caucasus Institute Political and economic cooperation between Armenia and Georgia is in many ways based on trade and energy transit through Georgian territory. In its turn, Armenian direction has a great importance for Georgia in this context. However with the increase of perspectives of Iran coming out of the international sanctions regime after achieving agreement regarding its nuclear programme, and considering lingering tense Russian-Georgian relationship, Armenia can also be regarded for further perspectives for transit and regional interests of Georgia. This article highlights several aspects of the role…
The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and may not coincide with the official position of Caucasian House Anne Hardt Intern at Caucasian House Since the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, the European Union has been facing several interrelated crises: the Euro-crisis, the Ukraine conflict, the influx of refugees, IS terrorism, Euro-skepticism. And most recently adding to this, the British referendum held on June 23rd 2016 in which 52 percent of voters pronounced support for Brexit, alias leaving the EU. While the UK traditionally constituted one of the European key players and formed one half of…
On June 14-16, within the framework of the project “Georgian-Russian Dialogue for Peace and Cooperation”, Caucasian House hosted a regional forum in Batumi. This brought together Russian, Georgian and Armenian experts. The forum incorporated topics related to regional security and current political processes in Caucasus, the threat of Islamic radicalism in the region, the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgian-Russian relations and the influence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the region. Meetings were held in compliance with the Chatham House rules. Moreover,participants met with the representatives of local governmental institutions, in particular, the president of the Ajara Chamber of…
