Eurasianet

Officials in Moscow and their allies in Abkhazia and South Ossetia all canceled meetings with international diplomats brokering the discussions, casting the future of the talks into question.

While the decision isn’t likely to have a practical effect on people’s freedom to travel, it does signal a potential shift in Brussels’s approach to Georgia’s breakaway territories.

South Ossetia has opened up a bit. Residents on the de facto boundary with Georgia hope it lasts.

In South Ossetia, meanwhile, the authorities have remained completely silent on the issue. Most residents in both territories hold Russian citizenship, raising the prospect they could be drafted.

The two sides have promised to continue consultations on “integration,” though that is a buzzword that analysts suggested was a face-saving measure.

While the new de facto president praised ties with Russia, he did not mention the referendum that his predecessor called on his way out of office.

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.

Many outsiders have been calling on Georgia to take advantage of Russian weakness to reclaim its lost territories. But Georgians themselves aren’t having it.

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.

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.

Some in the breakaway territory worry that, by getting involved militarily in Ukraine, they could be exposing themselves to an attack from Georgia.

Their economies are exposed, but political concerns remain paramount.

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.

With an art school and international animation festival, a Georgian Orthodox bishop is trying to revive a village on the de facto border with South Ossetia.

The ruling bolsters Tbilisi’s narrative that Moscow “occupies” the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The protests follow the death in custody of a young man, the latest in a series of scandals involving local law enforcement.

The move, ahead of commemorations of the 75th anniversary of victory in World War II, comes after similar decisions in the Russian-backed breakaway areas of Eastern Ukraine.

The isolation of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh have served them well as the disease spreads all around them.

Analysts say tensions between Georgia and its breakaway region are the highest they’ve been since the 2008 war with Russia.

Local families rushed to move belongings out of their farmsteads, as masked Russian soldiers began fencing off their property from the rest of Georgia.

Residents call the moving border a “creeping occupation” because the Russian military has pushed deeper into Georgian territory since the war.

The self-declared republic won a soccer championship among fellow unrecognized territories, and the ruling party cemented its hold on power.

The head of the European Union’s peacekeeping mission in Georgia describes efforts to foster “managed stability”