ELDAR ISMAILOV

In connection with the meeting between Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, which was held on November 22 in Munich, the rumours that Yerevan can agree on liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh areas are discussed in Azerbaijan.

BORIS NAVASARDYAN

The Sunday negotiations in Munich, like the majority of previous meetings between Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, have not changed the prospects of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

ARCHIL GEGESHIDZE

The EU-Russia relations are of importance to Tbilisi, above all, in terms of non-recognition of the status-quo after the war between Georgia and Russia.

GHIA NODIA

The preparation for the presidential elections in Abkhazia and the nomination of Sergei Bagapsh for the presidency are important political events, but in Georgia they are of interest only to political analysts in terms of understanding the Abkhaz society’s attitudes.

ARCHIL GEGESHIDZE

If the reforms are conducted, there is a hope that next elections will be free and honest. This is an achievable task for both the authorities and the opposition, as other political goals are in the distant future. Those include NATO membership, integration with the EU, return of the lost territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

DAVID BERDZENISHVILI

The Georgian political establishment and the whole society share an opinion that in August 2008 Russia was aggressive and acted improperly. Russia invaded Georgia, which is acknowledged by all the political forces regardless of their status, by the authorities and by the radical and constructive opposition.

GIA ZHORZHOLIANI

The Russian leaders’ words that it is necessary to replace the Georgian authorities strengthen Mikheil Saakashvili’s positions. However I believe that drastic measures will not be taken. Both the authorities and the opposition are willing to act moderately.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

I believe that Barack Obama managed to avert another Russia-Georgia war and now Tbilisi is arguing more confidently that Russia’s war threat has been prevented. The question is for how long.  

ALEXANDER ISKANDARYAN

It is hard for the U.S.A. and other Western countries not to take into account Russia’s interests in the South Caucasus. In case there were any illusions in this respect, the five days war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 has dispelled them.

DAVID LOSABERIDZE

The situation in Georgia will be one of the issues of the negotiations between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama which will be held on July 6 in Moscow.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

What does the current situation in Georgia mean for Russia? On the one hand, the confrontation between the government and the opposition is Georgia’s domestic affair. Whoever wins the struggle, no one would take a pro-Russian position.

ALEXANDER RONDELI

The U.S. will not throw away its allies including Georgia for the sake of "reset" of the relations with Russia.

MICHAEL AVERKO

With the idea of a compromise in mind, perhaps a unique situation can be arranged, where Nagorno-Karabakh is jointly recognized as a part of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The conditions worked out under this hypothetical agreement would concern the return of refugees and the finer points on how Nagorno-Karabakh would be administered.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Having announced the date for the protest action beginning, the opposition does not tell the people what will happen in the country, even if they manage to oust Saakashvili.

ALEXANDER ISKANDARYAN

There are no new tendencies or changes in the U.S. policy towards the South Caucasus after the new U.S. Administration has been formed. Barack Obama has not worked out his South Caucasian policy yet. For the time being, the new U.S. authorities focus on overcoming the economic crisis.

GHIA NODIA

Frequent changes of Prime Ministers are good for the opposition members. They can criticize the authorities more actively, talk about the instability in the country, but they do not care who will be the next Prime Minister.

ALEXANDER RONDELI

In the eyes of the U.S. Administration Saakashvili represents the guarantor of stability and further development. If Saakashvili slowly but steadily promotes democratization in the country, he has nothing to worry about.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

It is difficult to forecast how diligently the Administration of President Barack Obama will follow the above-mentioned articles of the Charter. But there is a high probability (taking into consideration the increased tension in the Russia-U.S. relations) that Russia would consider the Charter as a challenge to its interests in South Caucasus.

ARCHIL GEGESHIDZE

The year 2008 was the most eventful in the entire history of independent Georgia. It started with the January presidential election: it was held against a background of the mass protest marches in November 2007. 

VASILE TARLEV

I believe that the initiative to sign the new European Security Treaty that is to unite all the states of the Euro-Atlantic world fully meets Moldova’s foreign-policy doctrine. Moreover, Moldova is interested in creating such a mechanism more than other European countries.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

For the first time, Georgia has not celebrated the anniversary of the Rose Revolution in a traditional pompous way and the authorities have not boasted about their successes as they had done annually on 23 November since 2003.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

On 2-3 December 2008, Brussels will host the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of NATO member states. On the agenda of the meeting there will be the issue of granting  the NATO Membership Action Plan to Georgia and Ukraine.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

The main reason why the fifth anniversary of the Rose Revolution is not celebrated with a great pomp is that the Georgians are bitterly disappointed with the results of the revolution. In fact, nobody was going to carry out democratic reforms, although the ‘revolutionaries’ had set themselves this goal.

MERAB PACHULIA

Over the past 10 months, most of opposition leaders have not enjoyed public support because they failed to solve important political issues and fell short of expectations of those who were strongly opposed to the government.

MARIA YULIKOVA

Two months of blaming rhetoric between Russia and the US leaders, prompted by the August Caucasus crisis, nearly annihilated all the diplomatic achievements in the relationships between the two countries of the current millennium, and caused frustration among the diplomats on both sides.

DAVID APRASIDZE

I believe that Georgia's Prime Minister Vladimir Gurgenidze was dismissed over both the Russia-Georgia armed conflict and the internal political situation. The August conflict in South Ossetia made it clear that the policy, pursued by the Georgian government must be changed and some reshuffles were necessary.  

MICHAEL AVERKO

It is difficult for Russia to change its decision to recognize Abkhaz and South Ossetian independence. Several options serve as a possible means for reaching a mutually agreed settlement.

SOYUN SADYKOV

I believe that the October 15, 2008 Azerbaijani presidential elections will be held calmly. There is no alternative to incumbent President Ilham Aliyev. The opposition failed to enlist the people’s support.

ALEXEY VLASOV, SERGEI MIKHEEV

"Every year somebody says that the Commonwealth of Independent States is dead as organization. However, what do we need this organization for? Unfortunately, in many respects the question cannot be answered in an optimistic way", Alexey Vlasov.

KIRILL GAVRILOV

At present, Russia tries to persuade its closest allies to follow Moscow’s example and to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s independence. Armenia could be the first CIS country to support Moscow's decision.

VIKTOR KREMENIUK

The Caucasian conflict indicates intense rivalry between the USA and Russia for the post-Soviet space. Russia still hopes to put an end to the expansion of the U.S. influence.

VLADIMIR CHIZHOV

The outcome of the extraordinary EU summit held on September 1 in Brussels was more or less predictable, both in terms of the views expressed by the EU member states and in terms of the EU Presidency conclusion.

PAVEL USOV

The main question, which has arisen before the Belarusian political elite, is with whom they should build relationships, with the East or with the West. The current political situation indicates that Belarus has reached a geopolitical impasse.

DAVID BERDZENISHVILI

Russia’s decision to recognize the independence of Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has been made not only by the Russian President and the Russian political establishment, but also, regrettably, by the majority of the Russian citizens. Few people in Russia criticized their authorities.

ROVSHAN IBRAHIMOV

When holding the military operation in South Ossetia the Georgian government tried to solve the problem of territorial integrity. If the military operation in South Ossetia had been successful, Saakashvili would have again recieved wide support from the Georgian population and his country could have been integrated into the Western community. 

GEORGETA POURCHOT

The current Russian military operation in Georgia marks the beginning of the end for Georgian sovereignty. The peace deal brokered by France contains the seeds of further chipping away at Georgian territory.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

Yesterday I could say that in Europe there were differences in relation to Russia’s actions in South Ossetia. Some countries blamed Georgia for the conflict, others blamed Russia. But at present there is a different tendency.

ANDREY MAKARYCHEV

South Ossetia and Georgia have been at war with each other since last week. The towns and cities came under fire, the reservists were mobilized. There are the killed and the wounded, and a lot of refugees.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

The guns are bellowing now in South Ossetia and Georgia, and muses of those who might mull over the solution of the grave crisis, are still silent. Many things including the people’s lives depend on how long the diplomats and policy-makers will be inactive.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

I believe that the withdrawal of the Russian railroad troops from Abkhazia and the UN Security Council meeting, which was held on July 21 at Georgia’s request, cannot be directly linked to each other. 

ALEXANDER RONDELI

I do not think there is a relation between the UN Security Council meeting where the Russian fighter jets’ violations of the Georgian airspace were discussed and the withdrawal of the Russian railroad troops from Abkhazia.

SERGEI BAGAPSH

What will Abkhazia do, if Georgia joins NATO? Abkhazia will do nothing. Let Georgia join NATO even tomorrow. We do not care about that.

EROSI KITSMARISHVILI

Currently, there are several negative points in the Russian-Georgian relations. The first one is Georgia’s bid for the NATO membership, the second one is Tbilisi’s conflict with the breakaway territories – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There are also the problems of the bilateral relations.

TEMUR IAKOBASHVILI

It is impossible to settle the conflicts, on which I am working, without Russia’s participation, especially today when the situation has become so strained that the so-called "frozen conflicts" have got "unfrozen".

KONSTANTIN GABASHVILI

We do not want to be at war with anybody. We want to normalize the situation, start negotiating with Russia and other countries to put an end to the conflict.

VALERY KENYAIKIN

The parliamentary elections will be held in Georgia soon. That’s why an “external enemy” is being looked for to mobilize the country’s public opinion.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Almost all significant political forces in Georgia, including the ruling party, say that there are sufficient reasons for making the compromises with Russia that would not infringe upon Georgia’s national interests.

ALEXANDER KRYLOV, ALEKSEY MALASHENKO, ANATOLY OTYRBA, SERGEI MARKEDONOV, SHALVA PICHKHADZE, ZURAB ABASHIDZE, IVLIAN KHAINDRAVA

"For the first time the President of Georgia has put forward such far-reaching proposals," Alexander Krylov.

DMITRY MEDOEV, GURAM GUMBA, SERGEI ARUTYUNOV, SERGEI MARKEDONOV

"If to look at a map, one can realize that in the event of the conflict in Abkhazia the Georgian party is doomed to defeat, as has happened before. This is why Abkhazia has a very good chance of becoming independent," Sergei Arutyunov.

DMIRTY MEDOEV, VLADIMIR KHOMERIKI, MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROV

"After the recognition of Kosovo, South Ossetia’s position remains unchanged. When asked about our attitude to that precedent we have always answered that it is South Ossetia that can be a de jure precedent for Kosovo, not vice versa," Dmitry Medoev.

KONSTANTIN GABASHVILI

Georgia’s wishing to change the format of the Mixed Verification Committee on Settlement of the Georgian-Ossetic conflict and the consideration by the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the situation with South Ossetia and Abkhazia during the March 13 parliament hearings are different things.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Mikheil Saakashvili once again extends hand of friendship to Russia and proposes to “turn over a new leaf” in bilateral relations.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

It is unlikely that after the election President Mikheil Saakashvili has changed his position on Georgian-Russian relations. For the time being, the statements about his wish to normalize those relations cannot be taken seriously.

GHIA NODIA

On July 24 Tbilisi hosted the first meeting of the State Committee on the status of South Ossetia. The Committee is intended to work out an approach to resolving the argument about South Ossetia’s status that would be acceptable both to Georgia and South Ossetia. 

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

The Georgian authorities did their utmost to convince the Europeans in Brussels that Dmitry Sanakoev was not Tbilisi’s puppet, but a representative of the Ossetian population in Georgia including the breakaway region.

OLEG FESENKO, VITALY KULIK

Early in May the Tbilisi officials voiced that “it is necessary to carry on the political dialogue with the authorities of the Tskhinvali region”. But Mikheil Saakashvili’s government decided to negotiate with the “alternative President” of South Ossetia Dmitry Sanakoev, who is close to the Georgian government.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

The pending recognition of independence of the Serbian province Kosovo by the United Nations and attempts by Russia to apply the “Kosovo precedent” to the conflict zones in the post-Soviet space might reverberate negatively for Georgia.

GHIA NODIA

Abkhazia, an unrecognized republic of Georgia, held December 6 a “national gathering” to express its will to gain independence.

MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROV

President of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity has signed the decree on holding the territory’s independence referendum in November.

Russia’s victory over Georgia in the armed conflict in South Ossetia, the diplomatic maneuvers which followed the conflict and showed that the Western community cannot (and does not want to) oppose Russia in a serious way, and Dmitry Medvedev’s bold statements at the Valdai International Discussion Club make the President of Russia ‘a hero of the day’.

It seems that after the conflict with Georgia all we need is to clash with Ukraine. A lot of politicians both in Russia and Ukraine would definitely like it to happen. Caucasian crisis resulted in a new quarrel over Sevastopol, this time provoked by the Ukrainian side.

Since 1991, Ukraine has sat on the fence like a country coquette with her back to her jealous ex-husband Russia, from which the country’s ‘elite’ have nevertheless continued to get rich on cheap gas, while batting her eyes at the glamorous West, which offers lots of nice gifts but never a firm proposal of marriage.

The typical criticism of the UK’s Foreign Office is the one eloquently expressed in John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener - that they are pitiless practitioners of real-politik who care more about stability than idealism, and who only really work to protect the interests of British corporations, rather than British values. But on Russia, the Foreign Office seems to have erred on the other side.

By sending troops into Georgia earlier this month, the Kremlin has shown its willingness to use force to check the advance of the West into what it considers Russia's zone of influence. The pretext for the invasion, Georgia's military clampdown on its separatist region of South Ossetia, is irrelevant.

Georgia has resolutely condemned Russia’s actions in Chechnya. Russia has severely criticized NATO actions towards Serbia. Later on the Georgian authorities tried to do the same thing in South Ossetia as the Russian authorities had done in Chechnya. Moscow decided to treat Georgia in the same way as NATO had treated Serbia.

The Russian foreign policy boringly runs around in circles: the row with Estonia on the historic past, the squabbles between Moscow and Kyiv over the Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the confrontation with Georgia because of its breakaway republics etc. After having made a full circle we are back to square one - another conflict with Georgia.

The Georgian government has apparently been offering olive branches to the Russian government over the last two weeks, with the demotion of hawkish defence minister Irakli Okruashvili to the ministry of economy (he’s since resigned).

Georgia's withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) last Tuesday highlights the uncertainty of the post-Soviet alliance's future.

More Georgians favor close relations with United States, European Union.

Although Georgia went to war with Russia last year, a new nationwide survey indicates mixed feelings about Russia.

The streets of Moldova and Georgia are boiling with protest and anger, while Kosovo continues to grapple with its self-proclaimed statehood.

Saakashvili’s address did not have a radical tone this time. Populist rhetoric was also missing. Saakashvili said almost nothing about his vision of how territorial integrity would be restored.

The US-Georgia Charter is not a Mutual Defence Pact. But It Draws Red Line for Russia.

Deepening Georgia’s integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions is a mutual priority, and we plan to undertake a program of enhanced security cooperation intended to increase Georgian capabilities and to strengthen Georgia’s candidacy for NATO membership.

The August events have given a boost to major shifts in the alignment of forces and priorities in NATO territory, although these consequences will not become manifest in full at once.

As Georgia marks the fifth anniversary of the Rose Revolution the mood is somber and the celebrations of past years are conspicuously absent. This is understandable. The revolution has lost a lot of its luster and Georgians are in a funk.

An agreement between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia on the Nagorny Karabakh conflict this week has renewed hopes of peace – but also sparked fears amongst Armenians and Azerbaijanis about what this would mean for them.

The decline of big powers in history always started with political, economic and social problems inside and on the periphery of their empires. Consequently, the glacis between falling and rising powers became the contested area for exercising influence.

The brief August war between Georgia and Russia served to highlight the destabilizing potential of unresolved conflicts in the Caucasus and thus lent a new urgency to ongoing efforts to find a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The lecture by Steven Pifer, Visiting Fellow of the Brookings Institution, on Russia's interests and influence in modern world and the ways for the U.S. government to reach the point in this key bilateral relationship.

A top European Union diplomatic mission, headed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, will be in Moscow on September 8 to meet with President Dmitry Medvedev about the Georgia crisis, before flying to Tbilisi.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, Acting Chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), was officially recalled from vacation on August 14, but he returned to his Kyiv office several days earlier.

What began on August 7 as a reckless act of aggression by Georgia to bludgeon South Ossetia into submission, quickly escalated to Russian military intervention in Georgia, and the conflict's transformation into a proxy war between the U.S. and Moscow.

Georgia and Russia have agreed to an EU-sponsored peace plan to end five days of fierce fighting in Georgia that has killed at least several hundred people and left thousands homeless.

1,625 Georgian military servicemen are taking part in a large-scale international military training, alongside US forces, known as Immediate Response at the site of the fourth infantry brigade of Vaziani base.

Days before the NATO summit in Bucharest began, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili rolled out a new peace initiative for breakaway Abkhazia.

Davit Bakradze, the Georgian foreign minister: “As a result of an agreement between the presidents, [direct] air traffic will be resumed between Russia and Georgia in the nearest future, it is expected that flights will resume from the second half of March.”

The ink has hardly dried on Kosovo's independence declaration.  And already, reactions are flowing from frozen conflict zones in the former Soviet Union as if on cue.

Interview with Jaroslaw Walesa, the member of parliament of Poland.

Eurasian Home with a kind permission of The Institute for Policy Studies (Tbilisi) publishes a report, prepared by Nana Sumbadze, “Georgia Before and After the August War”. The report reflects the results of the survey of the Georgian population, carried out in 2007 and 2008.