Georgia
Middle East conflict and energy shock slow growth across EBRD regions
Bank warns higher energy costs are reigniting inflation, weakening industrial competitiveness and straining already fragile public finances
Tbilisi counts the cost of Trump Tower
Local residents fear development will destroy "green lungs" of Tbilisi, as their government encourages Trump Tower project to mend relations with Washington.
CAUCASUS BLOG: Russia's South Ossetia treaty edges toward annexation
New treaty amounts to de facto annexation of separatist Georgian republic, analysts and Georgian opposition figures say.
Georgia and Azerbaijan sign energy and transit deals at Aliyev-Kobakhidze summit
Deals cover natural gas supply, electricity imports and transit, the revival of the Baku-Tbilisi-Supsa oil pipeline, and rehabilitation work on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.
Georgia’s drift from the West opens a strategic window for Armenia on Europe-Asia trade routes
South Caucasus' strategic value has risen since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but Georgia's importance is in question as relations with the West deteriorate, says OSW report.
Central Asia lagging in AI diffusion – report
Adoption rates, however, are among highest in Asia.
New report documents how Central Asian states abet Russian sanctions-busting
Georgia is Russia’s primary route in Caucasus.
MEPs call for EU sanctions on Ivanishvili as Georgia slides toward authoritarianism
European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee warns Georgia is in rapid descent into authoritarian rule and that any EU engagement with Tbilisi must be strictly conditional on verifiable democratic reforms.
COMMENT: How Trump lost Europe in Armenia
Forty-eight European heads of state met in Yerevan on May 4 with no American present. The Yerevan EPC was the moment Europe stopped trying to prevent the transatlantic rupture and started managing it.
Is Russia quietly blocking the development of the Middle Corridor?
Mysteriously, the project to build the transit route’s most critical piece of infrastructure, Anaklia deep sea port in Georgia, remains stalled.
Why global population collapse will keep the wars coming
Demographers warned for decades that ageing, declining states grow more dangerous, not less. The wars now spreading from Eastern Europe to the Gulf to East Asia look increasingly like the opening engagements of a long contest over who outlasts whom.
Georgia permanently suspended from Open Government Partnership over civic space restrictions
Suspension adds to a growing list of international actions against Georgia over democratic backsliding.
Middle Corridor in play
Squeezed by a sanctioned Russia to the north and a war prone Middle East to the south, the Middle Corridor that runs through Central Asia and the Caucasus is back in play as the main route connecting Europe to Asia by land.
Orbán's defeat deprives Georgian Dream of its main EU ally as opposition draws hope from Hungary vote
Georgian PM Irakli Kobakhidze congratulated Peter Magyar while simultaneously thanking Viktor Orbán for "outstanding and steadfast support of Georgia's national interests".
Orbán’s election defeat shakes illiberal allies in Southeast Europe
Implications for leaders across Southeast Europe who have aligned themselves with Viktor Orban's brand of illiberal governance.
Georgia's economic boom was built on temporary factors and is now fading, analysts warn
Georgia's headline GDP growth figures conceal a more troubling reality: the factors that drove the economy's expansion since 2022 were largely temporary and are already beginning to fade.
$2bn World Bank loan to eliminate Bosporus bottleneck in China-Europe trade corridor breakthrough
INRAIL project also a boost for commerce aross Central Asia, Caucasus and Middle East.
TCHAKAROV: Shockwaves from Tehran in the Caucasus and Central Asia
The spillover effects of recent developments in Iran have already begun to manifest themselves in ways that demand investor attention.
Middle East conflict fallout to slow growth, push up inflation in Emerging Europe and Mediterranean region, EBRD says
Development bank says economic fallout is already spreading, through higher energy and fertiliser costs, damage to tourism and higher debt-servicing costs.
Georgia's record economic run impresses Wall Street, but investors flag political risk
Georgia is the standout economic story in the South Caucasus but investors are increasingly looking at governance and democracy.