OC Insider

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Tucker Carlson brings the ‘war on Christianity’ to the Caucasus

•3 min read

There is so much wrong with Tucker Carlson’s recent episode on Armenia — featuring Narek Kareptyan, the nephew of jailed Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan and his amoral, opportunistic lawyer Robert Amsterdam — that it is hard to know where to begin. I think part of the reason I’m writing this newsletter is to put my thoughts on paper about the literal torrent of misinformation and false narratives contained in the episode (and to spare my coworkers, who are probably tired of hearing me

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Ivanishvili’s ‘Georgian Dream’ of a populist right-wing Europe

by Robin Fabbro

•1 min read

When the European Council presented their latest enlargement report on Tuesday, no one was surprised by what was said about Georgia. EU enlargement chief Marta Kos called it ‘the worst enlargement report for any candidate country ever’. The response from the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, was also fairly typical. He accused the Brussels deep state/global war party of orchestrating a coup attempt, of financing radicalism, of blackmail — all par for the course. He also a

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Five years of loneliness

by Elizaveta Chukharova

•2 min read

It must be nice to come home when you live in another city. Your family welcomes you, sets the table — you bring them gifts. Then you visit friends, and walk along the familiar streets from your childhood, breathing in the scent of freshly fallen leaves. You drink tea or wine together and remember what it was like to be teenagers. Unfortunately, such a feeling is unknown to me. I left Vladikavkaz in 2020 and haven’t been home since. Meeting my loved ones has become a kind of quest — I can’t go

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The OSCE’s tone-deaf visit to Azerbaijan

by Yousef Bardouka

•2 min read

Last week, Elina Valtonen, the OSCE Chair-in-office and Finnish Foreign Minister, attended a demonstration in central Tbilisi as a show of support for the long-running protest movement against the Georgian Dream government’s anti-Western trajectory. While not the first EU diplomat to have attended a protest in Tbilisi, her attendance drove the government to say that it had cancelled her meeting with Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze — or so it seemed. Valtonen quickly hit back, saying that she

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As Azerbaijan and Russia apparently make up, have we learned anything?

by Nate Ostiller

•2 min read

After almost a year of plummeting relations, Azerbaijan and Russia seem like they have ended their very public beef. At a meeting in Dushanbe earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised, on camera, to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the deadly Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane crash in December 2024 — the incident that had set off the chain of escalating tit-for-tat actions between Moscow and Baku. In a delicately-worded admission of guilt, Putin acknowledged that the

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Georgia’s 4 October is over — but is it really?

by Mikheil Gvadzabia

•3 min read

My previous OC Insider was titled ‘Georgia’s uncertain 4 October’. That date has now passed, yet the ambiguity has not faded — neither the ambiguity tied to the day itself, nor, even more so, the ambiguity that has haunted the future of the Georgian state since long before 4 October. For those who haven’t been closely following events, here’s a brief recap: on 4 October, Georgia held municipal elections that were boycotted by much of the opposition, including the two largest opposition groups.

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Awaiting Georgia’s uncertain 4 October

by Mikheil Gvadzabia

•2 min read

On 4 October, two remarkable events are set to unfold in Georgia — the municipal elections and an anti-government demonstration, branded by its initiators as a ‘peaceful revolution’ and a ‘peaceful overthrow’ of Georgian Dream’s rule. I feel uncertain about what exactly to expect from that day, and based on past experiences, I’m not even trying to form any specific expectations. The elections issue has further fractured Georgia’s already fragmented opposition: two major opposition groups and s