As the war enters its 439th day, we take a look at the main developments.

• May 8, 2023

By Yeghia TASHJIAN, Beirut-based regional analyst and researcher, columnist, "The Armenian Weekly”

The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200 kilometre model of ship network, rail and road project, was initiated in 2000 by Russia, Iran and India to facilitate trade between India, Russia and Europe. Azerbaijan, Armenia and other countries joined the initiative in 2005. This transport corridor aims to reduce the delivery time of cargo from India to Russia and Northern Europe to the Persian Gulf and beyond. Compared to the sea route via the Suez Canal, this route’s distance shrinks by more than half, which brings the term and cost of transportation down. If the present delivery time on this route is over six weeks, it is expected to decrease to three weeks through this corridor.
In my March 2021 analysis “Armenia and India’s Vision of ‘North-South Corridor’: A Strategy or a ‘Pipe Dream?’” I warned that Armenia’s inability to play an active transit role between Russia/Europe and Iran/India will isolate the republic from regional trade. Between 2005-2018, Armenia did little to finalize the north-south strategic highway connecting its northern border to the southern border, mainly due to public corruption and carelessness. READ MORE

• May 5, 2023

Russia’s government passes a new electronic draft law in advance of a planned spring offensive.

• May 1, 2023

Three missiles get through and cause no casualties, Kyiv says, but one person is reported killed in separate attacks in Kherson.

• May 1, 2023

From Wagner’s crimes and fake pretexts to the UN’s inaction, the Iraq invasion offered a preview of the Ukraine war. But not all is the same.

• May 1, 2023

By Benyamin POGHOSYAN, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have ushered in hopes of humanity's happy and harmonious future. The ideas such as "End of history" (Fukuyama, 1992) became very popular both within academic circles and policymakers. There was a widespread belief that the entire planet would live under liberal democracy, and interstate conflicts will become bad memories from history. The last decade of the 20thcentury seemed to confirm those hopes. The EU and NATO enlargement, market reforms informer socialist states, cooperative relations between Russia and the West, and the growing US –China economic cooperation have seemingly justified hopes for establishing the world united under the banner of liberal democracy. READ MORE

• April 27, 2023

By Vusal GULIYEV, Visiting Research Fellow at the Asian Studies Center of Boğaziçi University

In late December 2022, Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, raised the Uyghur issue at an end-of-the-year press briefing by questioning whether Xi Jinping’s government had failed to keep a promise made five years ago. The Uyghur issue concerns events that began in 2017, in which the accusations against the Chinese government’s crackdown on thousands of Uyghurs in detention camps under the guise of an anti-terrorist operation has started. The promise of which Çavuşoğlu spoke was an unfettered visit by a Turkish to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). However, that promise has not been kept because of the myriad of requirements placed on the visit by China, such as predetermining the places to be visited. READ MORE

• April 27, 2023

By Eugene KOGAN, Tbilisi-based defence and security expert

Israeli-Azerbaijani relations are based on two main pillars: patient and cordial political relations as well as defence cooperation and arms sales. While the former reached a more intensive level this year, with the opening of an Azerbaijani embassy in Tel Aviv in late March, the latter pillar of the relationship was well developed long before, as Israel became Azerbaijan’s largest weapons supplier.
After decades of keeping a low diplomatic profile vis-à-vis Israel, in November 2022 the Azerbaijani parliament approved a bill on opening an embassy in Tel Aviv. This was a historic decision as, until then, Azerbaijan had consistently rejected Israeli overtures to send a permanent ambassador, despite the opening of an Israeli embassy in Baku in August 1993. It took almost 30 years for Azerbaijan to reciprocate since the country’s leadership did not want to alienate other Muslim-majority states or provoke the Iranian authorities, who blamed Israel for worsening relations along the Baku-Tehran axis. However, in the wake of the 2020 signing of the Abraham Accords on diplomatic normalization between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates, followed by the exchange of Israeli and Turkish ambassadors two years later, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev felt that the time was right to follow suit. READ MORE

• April 15, 2023