Ben Horton
Well, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today for this latest Members’ Question Time event. My name is Ben Horton. I’m the Head of the Director’s Office here at Chatham House, where I work closely with our Director, Bronwen Maddox, on all things, kind of, strategic planning and public affairs. It’s really wonderful to welcome so many of you to this event to discuss the various situations emerging in the South Caucasus region. Obviously, a very ambitious topic to get through in a very, very short space of time, but I’m delighted to be joined by my colleague, Natalie Sabanadze, to cover this for us. Natalie is our Senior Research Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme here at Chatham House, and has a long career, distinguished career, dealing with the issues that we’re going to be talking about today.
Just a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. So, this event is on the record, it’s being recorded, and it’s being livestreamed, meaning everything that you hear can be shared. So, please do share it on social media if there are key takeaways that you want to flag. We will be hearing shortly from Natalie, who will give us some introductory remarks about her impressions of what exactly is happening in the South Caucasus at the moment and the extent to which Russia, maybe, is navigating those, kind of, trends, and what that means for Russia’s influence in the region, also. I will then open up the floor. We’ve had some questions submitted in advance. Thank you very much, everybody who’s sent in their questions ahead of this, but we’ll also, obviously, be taking questions live. If you want your question to be answered, please do just put it in the Q&A box there below and I will get to as many of them as we can, radio phone-in style. Ambitious effort from us there. We might not be able to get through everyone’s questions, but we’ll do what we can.
Okay, the only other thing that I’ve been reminded to mention is that towards the end of the event, we will be submitting a question for you all to answer, which is a poll that we’ll read out then, which just gets your thoughts on what you’ve heard today and whether any of that has changed your mind. But we’ll get to that towards the end of the half hour. I’ve spoken for far too long already, so I’ll hand over now to Natalie. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us today and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what is an incredibly varied and complicated region.
Natalie Sabanadze
Thanks a lot, Ben. It’s actually very exciting to talk about this. I would like to make three, sort of, analytical points and then unpack them as much as I can, time permitting, and then, hopefully, take the questions. So, let’s begin by actually answering the question, “Is Russia Losing South Caucasus”? And I would say that Russia is losing its exclusive and uncontested dominance over the South Caucasus, which it, basically, held for the past 200 years. However, it is not exactly the same as saying that Russia is losing South Caucasus per se. I think relative to all other actors, that – and the space is becoming increasingly congested, but the – relative to other actors, both regional and extra-regional, Russia still maintains quite a considerable influence and I would say, greater – a stronger position than others. But at the same time, it is increasingly constrained in imposing certain outcomes on the region and, sort of, defining and determining the situation the way it used to be. So, it’s losing its hegemonic role, but it is still the strongest player. So, that’s one point.
The other point I want to make is I mentioned that this is becoming an increasingly congested area. You have regional actors vying for greater influence, Russia, which is diminishing, and greater role for Turkey and Iran. But you also have extra-regional actors, i.e., the West, let’s put it together, EU and the United States, greater economic footprint of China and increasing, also, political interest from the states in the South Caucasus to engage with China. So, what we see is that South Caucasus is emerging as a, kind of, a microcosm of multipolarity. So, anybody who’s actually interested in understanding how multipolarity works and could work at the global scale, South Caucasus is a very good place to start, by looking what’s going on there.
And the final point I want to make is we – paradoxically, diminished Russia, has, in a way, translated, also, in the diminished attraction of the West and the Western integration projects. Now, this may sound counterintuitive, but I will try to explain a little bit later what I mean by this. So, to start by quickly assessing the, sort of, position of Russia relative other actors. First of all, when you do comparison, you a have to look what Russia was like in terms of its status and domination of the region, let’s say 20 years ago, and look at it now, and the difference is quite striking. And then, already from the very beginning of the 90s, Russia emerged out of the collapsing Soviet Union as definitely much stronger player than all these newly independent states. They had no foreign policy assets. They had, basically, no military, no experience of statecraft. So, obviously, Russia was able to impose its rules of the game, and it wanted to maintain the dominance and the political dominance and, sort of, keep these states in a semi-sovereign – with a semi-sovereign status.
And to do this, Russia leveraged definite political conflicts and appeared as a, kind of, security guarantor. First, it meddled into these conflicts. In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, the joke goes beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan, it always supported conflict. So, it, kind of, sold weapons to both sides, maintained a peacekeeping force that was like a major instrument for influencing both Armenia and Azerbaijan. In case of Georgia and its disputed territories, it took side of separatists and then came in as a peacekeeper, which, in fact, was, of course, Russia’s peacekeeping force actually was a conflict keeping force. It never tried to resolve these conflicts but tried to use it as a leverage to maintain influence.
With the full scale of invasion, if you, sort of, fast-forward to today, already, from the, like, 2020 and even earlier, you see that the Russian policy of, sort of, managing instability is reaching its limits. The states are becoming stronger and they’re looking for different alliances and finding their ways in this world. So, Russia is becoming more aggressive. It goes directly into the war with Georgia in order to say that it’s going to use all means possible to derail, sort of, European Euro-Atlantic integration of Georgia. This is an example and a lesson for Azerbaijan, that decides that the cost of Western courting might be too high, so it follows a much more careful line. And Armenia remains fully, sort of, dependent on Russia.
So, Russia has actually accumulated quite considerable assets in the region over time. Military presence and even though, after collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian peacekeepers have left and it’s a big exodus of the Russian Military, still, there are three big military bases in the region. One is in Gyumri in Armenia, which is the second largest city. It’s very close to Turkish border and someone even described it as “Last remaining piece of Iron Curtain.” Then there are military bases in Georgia’s regions, occupied regions, excuse me, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia more or less of the same size. Russia has announced plans to build a naval base in Abkhazia’s Ochamchire, given the pressure it is experiencing in Black Sea.
Also, it has obviously, a huge energy leverage. Armenia is almost entirely dependent on Russian energy resources. Russia remains the largest trading partner and the market both for Georgia, which initially, sort of, lost these contacts after the war, but now Russia is, again, a very important economic player in general, in the region. And of course, it has huge-non-conventional resources. I mean, it can – it – there is information operations, pro-Russian groups. Russian can engage in cyberattacks. Only yesterday came out a report that, you know, between 2017 and 20, Russia, basically, hacked the entire Georgian Government. Looks like me, too, as I was Georgia’s Ambassador in Brussels at that time. So, there’s a lot of potential for subversion, and if you compare that to the assets that other actors have, which have relatively recently entered this theatre, it’s still quite considerable.
Now, if we talk about constraints, and I’ll go quickly, first of all, it’s, of course, bandwidth. You know, Russia is engaged in the war, so Russia decided against Ukraine and Russia decided that it needs to re-evaluate its assets in the region and, sort of, recalibrate. So, it decided that the cost of supporting Armenia, for example, was too high. It didn’t want to antagonise Azerbaijan, certainly not wanting to fight another for – war against quite well equipped and trained Army of Azerbaijan and decided that it needed a stake in the connectivity projects that were going on. So, the calculation has changed that cost Russia a diminished role in the region, but it decided that it needed it more. Whether it’s a decision or it’s been forced to do it, is another question.
Linked to this is also that these three states are also more capable, stronger and they have already, sort of, accumulated experience of managing very difficult, sort of, living in this grey zone and this has always been a very contested area. You have the rise of Azerbaijan, which is one of the major elements in this. Basically, sort of, eyeing the power – the role of the middle power, and with Azerbaijan, greater role of Turkey. And the, kind of, logic of competition almost invites greater role of Iran, and that’s relatively new. Iran has always been focused on the Middle East, but now, sort of, feeling a bit – feeling that it has ceded too much influence in the South Caucasus to Turkey and Azerbaijan, it’s getting more involved. And as I mentioned, you have China, as well, and you have EU, and Georgia is actually candidate status, but paradoxically, Georgia Euro – EU relations today are worse than they have ever been.
So, in this picture, basically, you really have this microcosm of multipolarity and it’s interesting that the defining features of this, that there are no rules or norms that govern relations, its highly competitive environment, its – the compe – the logic of competition almost invites the competition to be defined in territorial terms. So, you have this return of territoriality, return of the importance of geography, looser alignments, rather than strong alliances, and, you know, the, sort of, personal rapport before lea – between leaders becomes important and multipolarity is not conducive to democratisation.
And linked to this is precisely this, kind of, diminishing influence of the West. Because for countries – so, the countries look around and they see Russia was the major threat, but if they see that Russia as a threat is diminished, and it can be balanced out better and more effectively by other actors than the Western actors, and these other actors have an additional bonus of not looking into what’s going on domestically and preaching about the human rights and the governance models, that it’s much better option, you see. Now, for Georgia, as well, it was a security paradigm to move to the West to join EU and NATO, but the urgency diminishes if you feel, again, that Russia is not the same and there are other actors that you can, sort of, balance about. So, we can talk a bit more when the questions.
Ben Horton
Well, thank you so much, Natalie. That covered so much ground, thank you. I’m going to dive – I mean, there’s a million things that I would love to ask as a follow-up question to that, but I’m going to dive right into questions that we’ve got coming in. Keep them coming…
Natalie Sabanadze
Okay.
Ben Horton
…guys, on the – in the Q&A box. I just wanted to pick up, I mean, on this point of the, kind of, number of different actors increasingly trying to, sort of, muscle in and influence the region, and we had a question submitted in advance, which actually is echoed by Craig Oliphant in the chat, around ‘China’s aims’ in the region. So, I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about what exactly China is trying to do in the Caucasus, but also, to – the extent to which, I guess, Russia is competing with China, or are they working together, co-ordinating their activities?
Natalie Sabanadze
Hmmm hmm. So, Chinese role is quite interesting. At the moment, it remains economic, and I mentioned ‘economic footprint’. For example, in Georgia, Chinese investments in infrastructure are huge. But it also is becoming political, because it is the Chinese consortium that won the bid for building Anaklia Airport in Georgia and there was a – you know, it almost become a project of competition whether American or Western European companies would win, or would it go to the Chinese? So, China won out. Georgia reached out to China, signed strategic partnership agreement. You know, there’s been – this was also accompanied by singing praises to China and Chinese model and so on. What is interesting is that unlike Russia, China does not have the kind of political baggage in the Caucasus, so it’s not – its political influence is not feared as much as, for example, Russian world. So, also, for the population, it is much easier to accept and see, well, it’s an opportunity to, basically, do business. It’s an opportunity for greater development, and we can see that we have better roads.
China is also very much interested and developing particularly strong ties with Azerbaijan, because as I said, Azerbaijan is a pivotal state. It’s also a key state in the East-West Transport Corridor and the so-called Middle Corridor. Now, I don’t know how much China is invested in the Middle Corridor, but it certainly is interested in promoting it and it’s expected that China and Azerbaijan will also do strategic partnership agreement. Chinese presence is less is Armenia, but Armenians are – also, would welcome greater Chinese investments. And Russia ha – simply has to accept the Chinese presence in the region, because Russia is not only fighting the war against Ukraine. Russia is fighting conventional war against Ukraine and it’s fighting hybrid war against West, which it cannot do alone.
So, Chinese support is fundamental and even when I was talking about, you know, other actors and how they are becoming increasingly present in the South Caucasus, this is a reflection of the fact that even in relation with Iran or Turkey, is before Russia had a dominant position. Now, the power balance has really shifted and became much more equal. So, this, kind of, dynamic is reflected in the South Caucasus as a theatre, as well. And so, the same goes with China, where for example, in Central Asia, it’s even stronger, this competition. But, you know, two factors are that the local actors will welcome Chinese economic footprint and – because it has less of this, kind of, a political baggage.
Ben Horton
Thank you, thanks very much, and I’d love – obviously, in this week ahead of the elections, we’ve all got Georgia on our mind. I’d love to ans – just pick up on a couple of questions. One that was sent in on the chat, which is just simply, “Do you think that the election in Georgia will be fair and free?” the one that we’re about to witness. And then, maybe just picking up on Nicholas Bruch’s question in the Q&A, “Just what might increasingly alignment between the Georgian and Russia Governments mean for security in some of those particularly tested parts of the region, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia?” So, election point and then, also, the, kind of, security point.
Natalie Sabanadze
Yeah. Alright, briefly on the elections, will these be ‘free and fair’? These will be competitive elections, and we have four, sort of, electoral blocs competing. Opposition, sort of, rallying around pro-European, pro-Western platform and framing these elections as a choice between the European integration or going back to the Russian orbit. While the Georgian Dream is framing this as a choice between war and peace and saying that “This is the only party that has maintained peace,” and “give us time.” However, they are not against European integration, because they cannot be. By all polls, this is very high, the popularity is in the 80s, and even among the Georgian Dream supporters, European integration is high on the agenda.
But it will not be fair elections. I can already say that they are not fair now, because they are – I’m borrowing it from someone who’s described this in the context of Hungary, that these are ‘structurally rigged’ elections. Because you have no longer independent institutions. You have changed – constantly changing election code, where composition of Central Election Commission is in favour of the incumbent – where the incumbent controls all the resources. In Georgia, public sector is the largest employer. There’s a lot of pressure, distribution of incentives and threats. So, all in all, the structures that are put in place make the le – the playing field so uneven that, basically, winning elections for the opposition is extremely difficult. That’s why they’re so, sort of, mobilised and this is a real, sort of, fight right now.
The only structural, sort of, incentive that, right now – or advantage the opposition has, is that this will be, for the first time, fully proportional elections that, sort of, does not favour absolute majorities. And there is a chance that there might be a coalition government coming out of this. So, these will be competitive. We will see – and I don’t believe – I think the, you know, stealing of elections, that has become much more subtle. They don’t do it on the day of elections, it’s predetermined. It’s, as I said, it’s already structurally set, so it’s unfair, but there is still a chance.
And yes, you – about the alignment between Russia and Georgia and the security implications of this. So, there is – there has been a lot of speculation what Russia will do in relation – while Russia is, kind of, adapting, right, and recalibrating, as I said and re-evaluating its assets, it has Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which is, like – South Ossetia, basically, it’s a dagger in the heart of Georgia. It’s right in the middle. Russian troops can simply walk down and block the major highway and split the country in half. Abkhazia Russia needs for the dominance in the Black Sea, but before they recognised these two regions as independent, which in a way, diminished the leverage, and then they started to promote recognition of these regions by other states. Basically, trying to buy recognition in various countries that didn’t know what was going on, and later, I see that they have also abandoned that.
So, everybody’s wondering what is going on, well everybody, but you know, I’m wondering what is going on. Like, are they going to annex these territories, you know, the, sort of, Crimea style, or are they thinking of something else? So, there was speculation that Karabakh scenario might be considered, or something similar, where in order to save Georgian Dream and give it [inaudible – 23:15] before elections, which would be in Russia’s interest, maybe they will show some, sort of, signs of let’s find a deal around these territories. They backtracked on it, and I think Georgians simply don’t trust Georgia enough at this point and also, Abkhazia is really quite important.
But this might come back and what is interesting here, again, another, kind of, characteristic of the multipolarity that defines this region now, is that conflict prevent – conflict resolution is taken out of the multilateral normative framework, and it’s all done either by force or behind the scenes, sort of, deal. And there is an expectation that this is how it will work out. So, there’s – I mean, there’s much to talk about, also, in relation what that would mean in Georgia’s relation with NATO, with the European Union, but we don’t have time for that.
Ben Horton
Yeah. Sorry, I feel like we should be running these MQTs weekly to get through everything that we would want to talk about. I mean, there’s a couple of questions I also wanted to come to that were submitted to us in advance, but again, Amitabh in the Q&A has also, really helpfully, brought up, which is around the Middle East. Obviously, we’re tempted, when thinking about Russia and this region, as well, to be thinking about the implications of the War in Ukraine and, you know, sat here in London, it’s very easy to think about the connections there. But what a number of our members seem curious to know a bit more is, how is the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas now escalating into Lebanon and elsewhere and potentially involving Iran? How is that going to – how is that being received in the Southern Caucasus? What might this mean for, kind of, how will these countries align as that conflict develops and escalates?
And Amitabh’s actually brought out specifically the question of where Azerbaijan might position itself in this. “Would it, potentially, allow its territory to be used by its ally, Israel, for military action against Iran?” even. So, yeah, how is the conflict that we’re seeing in the Middle East, kind of, rippling out into…?
Natalie Sabanadze
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a very good question, because – and also, linked to this whole notion of Russia’s near abroad being restructured. As a result, we see a greater merger between South Caucasus and the Middle East as to inter – increasingly interrelated and interconnected regions, particularly with a greater presence of Iran and to a degree, Turkey. And geography is a, kind of – this is a logic of geography in some ways, because if you look at the distance between Yerevan and Tehran, Baku and the city in Iraq, for instance, or Tbilisi and Ankara, it’s all within 1,000km line. So – and traditionally, Middle Eastern powers were very much present there. In fact, what is going now is, in a way, return of the old imperial contestation. South Caucasus has always been a battleground between Russians, Ottomans and Persians and that’s, in a way, what we see now.
So, there is this definitely greater interlinkage and it’s very interesting how the states will position themselves. Now, Azerbaijan is a Muslim state. Azerbaijan is Muslim population, almost half of them are Shiite. Nevertheless, Azeri-Iranian relations are complicated. There are territorial issues, there is mistrust, there is ethnic issues, although now, there’s been quite a lot of normalisation behind the scenes. At the same time, Azerbaijan is Israel’s major ally. Azerbaijan supplies Israel with 40% of its oil needs and most of, I think, Israel now amounts – Israel equipment, is about in weaponry, 70% of Azeri equipment. So – and it was actually Israeli kits that has been used quite effectively in this last war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
There are also – reportedly, Azerbaijan allows, or would allow, Israel to use its airbases for various reasons. Now, it’s not really clear and I cannot predict how far, but perhaps for refuelling, for training, you know, but the access is pretty much there. And what is also interesting is that Azerbaijan is not really following the line of the, sort of, Muslim solidarity when it comes to assessing the situation or condemning the situation in Gaza, because there is not much domestic pressure to do it, a) because it is largely secular, but also, because a lot of Azeris appreciate Israeli, sort of, support in regaining territorial integrity. So, lack of domestic pressure is also quite important.
Now, Iran, there is a real risk that if the confrontation and actually, the war happens between Iran and Israel, this will have a direct impact on South Caucasus, precisely through these alignments, Azerbaijan with Israel and will it be under pressure? And, you know, whether it will change the position, I doubt it. But Iran is also interested in maintaining good relations with neighbours. Iran’s relations with the neighbours – with the West are very bad. So, this normalisation with Azerbaijan is also driven by pragmatic interests. So, perhaps one would expect that Iran wouldn’t push too much Azerbaijan in this particular case, but we will have to see.
And, of course, the position of Russia is, here, quite interesting, because Russia has changed its traditionally equidistant, sort of, position in the conflict in the Middle East and because it now has to promote this whole idea of Western double stands, neocolonialism and so on, has really sided with the Palestinian cause and so did Turkey. So, there will be pressures, definitely, felt on the regional actors from the Middle East and this tendency of the two regions to merge.
Ben Horton
Natalie, thank you so much. I think we are out of time, unfortunately, I – if my colleagues can confirm, but I wonder if I might just squeeze in one question, if you don’t mind.
Natalie Sabanadze
Yeah.
Ben Horton
Which was another one that was submitted in advance, which basically, asks the question of what the “impact of the South Caucasus has on Russia’s,” kind of, “internal” kind of, “stability and security,” as well, “particularly Russia’s” kind of, “Southern regions?” Does continuing instability, or, sort of, conflagration in these smaller countries that we’ve been talking about today, does that have an impact on Russia’s southern regions in – and I mean, in the question, they actually, “Is it – does it become a weak spot in Russia’s defence?”
Natalie Sabanadze
Well, this is how Russia viewed South Caucasus traditionally. I mean, Russia viewed South Caucasus – the importance of the South Caucasus ha – was twofold, right? One was as the basis for projecting its influence, well, its buffer zone, then as a basis for projecting its influence beyond the region, dominating Black Sea, but also influencing the Middle East and the Mediterranean. And most, probably importantly, was the connection between the, sort of, Northern Caucasus and the South Caucasus and Russia viewed it as one, sort of, security complex and believed that dominance over South Caucasus was very important, also, to, sort of, keep an eye on what is going on in the North.
This was particularly the thinking somewhere until mid-200s, because that, in a way, also reflected Russia’s own anxieties about controlling Northern Caucasus. I think they have diminished now, although the repercussions of what is going on in the Middle East might very much play in the North Caucasus. So, it’s not entirely detached and it’s not clear how much – I mean, Russia controls the region, definitely, but through the strong man and we saw the events in Dagestan. But the link between South and North Caucasus, in my view, is becoming more blurry and less obvious, just as much as, you know, South Caucasus is part of Russia’s near abroad, as opposed to the other parts of the world and other theatres, is also becoming more blurry.
Ben Horton
That’s really helpful, thank you, and a good place to end, I think. So, the only thing that remains for us to do is to now ask our audience for their thoughts. So, I think my glamorous events colleague, Tom, is going to flip that up on the box there. Yeah, thank you very…
Natalie Sabanadze
Oh.
Ben Horton
…much. So, now we can see – so, we would just love everybody’s initial thoughts, given everything that you’ve heard today, Natalie’s excellent overview of everything that’s going on, “Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus increased or diminished?” We’d just love to get your thoughts on that before we head on. We’ll just give you ten or 15 more seconds just to get your votes in [pause – 33:25-33:41]. All good, well, the results are pending. I – just while we’re waiting for the results to come up, I just wanted to say…
Natalie Sabanadze
Oh, there we go.
Ben Horton
Oh, here we are, oh, nice. There we go. No more filibustering from me. Keep it going. Okay, so…
Natalie Sabanadze
Alright, diminishing.
Ben Horton
…the results are in. Interesting, thank you, everybody, for voting. So, we have – it’s not unequivocal. We’ve got some…
Natalie Sabanadze
No, hmmm.
Ben Horton
…differences there, we’ve got some differences, but the results are essentially, that just under half, 44% of our listeners here believe that Russia’s influence has, in fact, diminished in the region. With 28% thinking it’s increased and 28% still undecided. So, I feel like that’s grounds to have a follow-up conversation. We’ve still got people who are not sure. We need to come back and…
Natalie Sabanadze
Very good.
Ben Horton
…tackle them head-on, but thank you. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us and for being so generous with your time and answering so many of these questions. Thank you to everybody who submitted questions in advance and who asked them in the chat today. I’m sorry we didn’t get to everything, but I guess all that remains for me to say is from Chatham House, enjoy the rest of your day and look forward to seeing you at the next event. Thank you.
Natalie Sabanadze
Thank you.