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On the eve of the second round of the snap presidential elections scheduled for March 1, 2025, the situation in Abkhazia has become extremely tense.

On 14.02.2025, a meeting took place in Washington between U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took place in Washington.

Based on recent events in the region, Washington has refused Ankara’s request to disarm the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and dismantle the Kurdish administration of Rojava.

The formal reason for the political-diplomatic conflict was an incident involving the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) passenger aircraft on December 25, 2024, in Aktau, Kazakhstan(2). Immediately after the crash, media outlets close to the Azerbaijan’s government placed all responsibility on the Russian side, accusing its air defense and civil aviation services of negligence and unprofessionalism.

In January 2025, the Iranian leadership once again announced its intention to move the capital from Tehran to the location called Makran – one of the regions of the Sistan and Baluchestan province, on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

In February 2025, during a press conference following talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. president Donald Trump proposed taking the Palestinian enclave of Gaza under American control in the form of “long-term ownership”.

Experts tend to believe that the success of Azerbaijani offensive in the fall of 2020 was due to the high degree of Ankara’s involvement in the Karabakh war.

In late January 2025, international media circulated a document with a request from a close associate of R. Erdogan, Turkish MP and the leader of the radical “Nationalist Movement Party” Devlet Bahceli, addressed to Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan.

By December 2024, RF defense minister Andrey Belousov outlined the priorities in the field of ensuring Russia’s security at an expanded meeting of the ministry’s board, noting “the fulfillment of individual tasks” and the military presence in Central Asia and Africa, the Caucasus, and Transnistria.

On January 19, 2025, a six-week ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian “radical group” Hamas came into effect in the Gaza Strip, aiming to end the 15-month-long war.

The events at the end of 2024 in Syria have revived the international agenda on the trans-regional energy route from the Persian Gulf to Europe.

The aggressive statements made by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, during an interview with the local media on January 7, 2025, were quite unexpected.

After the fall of the Bashar Assad regime, the contradictions between Turkey and Israel in Syria have intensified, revealing a fundamental divergence in their views on the future of the Middle East and, accordingly, their roles in its reorganization.

On January 7, 2025, The Jerusalem Post acknowledged about a report prepared by the Nagel Committee (Defense Budget and Security Strategy Analysis Commission, established in 2024) for the Israeli government.

The crash of the Embraer E190 aircraft of the Azerbaijani airline AZAL on December 25, 2024, revealed the fact that, contrary to their declared statements, relations between Russia and Azerbaijan are experiencing a difficult period.

After the collapse of B. Assad’s regime in Syria, there has been increased discussion in the global media about the “Qatar Gas Pipeline”, which is planned to run from the Persian Gulf to Europe.

On December 16, 2024, it became known that Baku was attempting to secure arms supply contracts with India through the mediation of a “third country”.

Ukraine’s decision to halt the transit of Russian gas to Europe as of January 1, 2025, will most severely impact Moldova.

The process of signing a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan is currently delayed. Based on the limited information available about the negotiations, it is difficult to speak about the timing of the final stage, if it happens at all.

On December 14, 2024, presidential elections were held in Georgia under the new Constitutional law.