South Caucasus in the Phase of Russian-Ukrainian War: New Security Challenges and Possible Scenarios for Development

Abstract

The paper mainly examines the economic, political and military situation in the South Caucasus after the start of Russian-Ukrainian war. In the paper we are focused on the question of what kind of consequences does the Russian-Ukrainian war has on the countries of the South Caucasus. Relying on the analytical-forecasting approach, we also are trying to forecast what developments can be expected in this region. On this regard we especially look onto the facts from Armenia’s perspective. Of course, the discussion of the situation in Georgia and Azerbaijan was also under our great attention, because we also had set a task to compare the processes that took place in the three countries of the region. The modernity of the topic can be measured, first of all, by its global political significance: Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues to be on the top of world political processes. On the other hand, it is actual when studying political and economic processes in the post-Soviet territory. By and large, as a result, the South Caucasus is a part of the European and Middle Eastern security sphere, or at least has an important role in them. Therefore, the ongoing developments in this region are not local and may also affect the European, Middle Eastern and the processes also in other regions. Russian-Ukrainian conflict has affected on foreign policy behavior of the Southern Caucasus countries. The region is now under the turbulence zone, so we are not aware from being faced by new challenges and security issues. Since we have highly evaluated the impact of the conflict on the countries of the region, we have also tried to make certain predictions regarding possible future development scenarios, which could be as recommendations for foreign policy decision making structures of Armenia.