The territory’s outgoing leader says the vote will take place in July. But he’ll be out of office by then and neither his successor, nor Russia itself, appear as interested in it as he is.
While Anatoliy Bibilov tried to boost his electoral chances by tying himself more tightly to Russia, analysts say his defeat will still not likely result in any substantial change in relations with Moscow.
The incumbent has come under fire for a controversial military deployment to Ukraine, and it’s not clear that a proposal to annex the territory to Russia will help him.
If Armenians stay in Karabakh under the Azerbaijani flag, it would represent an exception to the otherwise zero-sum game of territorial control in the region.
It’s not the first time the breakaway Georgian territory’s de facto authorities have signaled the intention. In the past Russia has blown the calls off, but its calculations may be different now.
More than 20,000 Russians have already fled to Georgia in the days since their country launched the invasion of Ukraine. Many Georgians say they are not welcome.
Tbilisi was previously planning to apply in 2024, after further reforms. But domestic political pressure, and apparent positive signals from Brussels, has sped up the process.
The government appears wary of provoking Russia’s ire, but to many Georgians their government’s caution amounts to a cowardly abandonment of their Ukrainian allies.
To many in Azerbaijan, it appeared that the new agreement was aimed at ensuring their country’s loyalty to Russia during the attack on Ukraine. Officials said the timing was just a coincidence.
Every country in the region has its own relationship with self-proclaimed breakaway republics, forcing them to reckon in their own ways with Russia’s moves in Ukraine.
Russia usually stays out of the Caucasus information wars, but the crisis in Ukraine is re-igniting disputes over who is to blame for Georgia’s frozen conflicts.
The Russia-led security bloc will be sending peacekeeping forces, the first time in its history that its collective security provision has been exercised.
The International Court of Justice declined, however, to order more concrete measures related to Armenian prisoners and maps of land mines in Azerbaijan.
There was much to discuss just over a year after the end of the war, including ongoing border tensions, plans to reopen borders and transportation, and the fate of Armenian prisoners.
The dispute over where the former Georgian president should be treated became sharper as he briefly lost consciousness as a result of his hunger strike.
