Two pro-Pashinyan candidates were the first-round leaders for de facto president. Observers noted widespread violations, however, and many argued the vote shouldn’t even have happened given the coronavirus outbreak.
There are worries that election observers from Armenia – which has been relatively hard-hit by the COVID-19 outbreak – could bring the virus into Karabakh.
The vote went ahead in spite of the global coronavirus outbreak; although Abkhazia hasn’t recorded any cases, election officials took pains that the disease couldn’t be spread by voting.
At its first session, the newly elected assembly introduced an entirely new leadership team, but the fealty to President Ilham Aliyev was as strong as ever.
The criticism from Abkhazia is rare, given its deep dependence on Russia. But a Russian media report about the “poisoning” of an opposition politician appears to have triggered Sukhumi.
Last year the candidate, Aslan Bzhania, claimed to have been poisoned by the then-president. Now he has fallen seriously ill again and his campaign says the vote can't go ahead without him.
Armenia went farther than most of Iran’s neighbors, closing its border for two weeks. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, was the only country to have not closed its border with Iran at all.
Georgia, the United States and the UK all placed the blame on Russia’s military intelligence service for last October’s attack, the biggest in Georgia’s history.
The novel technique suggests that the government was struggling to manage the fallout from the disappointing results of the previous weekend's elections.
Following a new eruption, western embassies in Tbilisi sought to restore talks aimed at preventing the country’s political crisis from spiraling out of control.
When the snap parliamentary elections were called two months ago, many expected them to bring in some sort of change. But the results are more of the same.
Ahead of parliamentary elections, a slate of young activists is trying a new tack: focusing on ideas and ideologies rather than on just toppling the government
Moscow, which heavily backs the de facto republic, called the events an “internal affair” of Abkhazia and appealed for talks between the government and opposition.
