The Bug Pit
Azerbaijan's military has advanced further into a no man's land on the border with Armenia, causing panic in the nearby Armenian areas, local media have reported. Armenia's military leadership has tried to downplay the advance, while Azerbaijan has been silent.
Israeli politicians have called on the country to formally recognize the Armenian genocide amid a diplomatic spat between Israel and Turkey. But the move has drawn criticism that it risks turning the genocide issue into an unseemly political football.
Newly elected Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time, as the two sides begin to navigate the choppy waters that lie ahead in the two countries' relationship.
Pashinyan and Putin met in Sochi on the sidelines of a May 14 summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Russia-led economic bloc that Pashinyan had opposed in his days as an opposition politician but to which he now vows to stay loyal.
Azerbaijan has reached a deal to buy missiles from Belarus, a Russian newspaper has reported. The deal was reported earlier this year to have been blocked by Armenia, which is angry about its ostensible military ally increasingly cozying up to its enemy.
On his recent visit to Washington, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili took every opportunity to urge his American partners to pass the Georgia Support Act in the United States Congress.
American Mercenary Was in Talks with Azerbaijan over Weaponized Crop Duster
An American mercenary attempted to sell modified crop duster aircraft to Azerbaijan's military, contravening United States laws on defense exports, a new investigation has found.
The United States appears to have given up on military cooperation with Kyrgyzstan – once its closest partner in Central Asia – because Bishkek has thrown its lot in with Russia and China, a senior US general has said.
The de facto president of Nagorno Karabakh, Bako Sahakyan, has made an unprecedented visit to Washington to try to boost American support for the unrecognized state. Azerbaijan, which claims Karabakh as its own, called the trip a “serious blow” to US-Azerbaijan relations and threatened to retaliate.
The United States has reportedly notified Armenia and other countries that they are at risk of sanctions if they continue to buy Russian military equipment. But the scale of the sanctions is so great to make them nearly impossible to impose, rendering the American threat mostly toothless.