The Armenians of Karabakh can still sign up to a “manageable” agreement on integrating into Azerbaijan, argues Gerard Libaridian, but they need to stop a sense of self-denial in failing to recognise that they won’t get everything they want.

On September 18, Unesco unveiled 27 new World Heritage features including three in the Caspian Region countries, plus the extension of another in Azerbaijan.

This weekend, artists and musicians brought a real buzz to Lachin City, culminating in a gala concert that appeared to delight Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, for whom it doubled as a kind of birthday treat.

In 2014, when Russia proposed sending convoys of ‘humanitarian aid’ to prop up its de-facto puppet states in Eastern Ukraine, the West reacted angrily. However, this month the EU and UN backed Armenia’s attempts to send a convoy to Karabakh. Hypocrisy?

War journalist, educator, and all-round maverick Thomas Goltz died on July 29. He rose to prominence in Eurasia with his unique first-hand reports from conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya, and especially Karabakh, where he was one of the first to report the Khojali massacre.

Is the world heading for a ‘post-truth’ world as AI starts to affect journalism? This was just one of several important questions debated by a high-powered conference of international media figures over three days in Azerbaijan’s cultural capital, Shusha. Mark Elliott attended for the Caspian Post.

At last weekend’s Shusha Global Media Forum, Caspian Post correspondent Mark Elliott had a rare opportunity to join a lengthy in-person Q&A with Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev. Here he shares his impressions of the event.

Azerbaijan celebrated its National Press Day on July 22, a day that is tied to the publication of an Azerbaijani language newspaper 148 years ago.

While Aliyev and Pashinyan’s latest Brussels meeting marked a fairly unremarkable continuation of their slow, steady progress towards an eventual peace treaty, Moscow’s reaction was an unexpected change of posture regarding their on-the-ground peacekeepers.

This week Azerbaijan hosted the latest summit meeting of the Non Aligned Movement. President Ilham Aliyev, the organsation’s current chairman welcomed numerous heads of state to Baku but the press focused particularly on his criticisms of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Three days of high level talks aimed at finding a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan concluded as planned on Thursday despite more deaths on the ground in Karabakh at the start of the week.

On 28 May, the first group of IDPs returned to Lachin, over 30 years since they were forced to leave.

An Azerbaijani production, Hadis, was chosen from over 3200 others to be shown at the Annecy Festival. The animation is a homage to Hadis Najafi, who was shot dead during the 2022 protests in Iran.

Today marks 100 years since the birth of Heydar Aliyev, who is referred to as Azerbaijan’s 'national leader.'

Music teacher, Habil Mammadov, hopes to organize a concert where his students can perform in his newly liberated hometown of Aghdam, where he was forced to flee from occupation.

Good news about malaria in the Caspian Region: there isn’t any!

One of North Ossetia’s potentially attractive tourist destinations, the Digorsky Gorge, is to be ‘saved’ from mineral extraction and offered stronger protection according to the republic’s political chief.

Xinaliq, one of Caucasus's highest settlements, is a magical place with its own language and timeless traditions.

Learn more about Richard Sorge, widely celebrated as "the spy to end all spies." Born in Azerbaijan to Russian and German parents, he went on to influence the course of WW2.

A triple tweet from Azerbaijan opens up the possibility of a new, higher-level round of talks between Baku and the Karabakh Armenian community. Will it lead anywhere?

Shootout at Karabakh - Five Dead, What Are the Implications?

For an unusual side glimpse at the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920), take a look at the state’s small and appealingly basic series of postage stamps.

Ani: an Ancient Ghost City with 21st-Century Implications

Molla Nasreddin magazine highlighted the hypocrisy of the Muslim clergy, the inequality of women, the imposed backwardness of the poor due to inadequate education and the unreasonable disdain of the Russified intelligentsia towards all things Azerbaijani.

It’s an understatement to call Armenia-Turkiye relations ‘frosty.’ However, with the dispatch of Armenian aid workers, there are encouraging signs of a reopening of dialogue.

After losing his partner, Arzu, in 2008, Omid has flown the 5000km migration alone. Read the background story on the last Siberian crane to fly the Western Route.

Nightingales are not just birds in Azerbaijan. They’re also celebrated singers - a member of the Karabakh Nightingale Ensemble producing one of the most celebrated recordings of 20th century Mugham music.

Legendary Georgian singer and film actor, Vakhtang Kikabidze, has died at the age of 84. He was famed for his Soviet-era performances but also for his vocal political support of Georgia and against Moscow’s post-2008 aggression.

Today is Christmas Day for Georgians, Ukrainians, Russians and some other Eastern Orthodox Christians. But why do they celebrate on January 7? Well, it all has to do with ignoring a 16th-century pope.

December 31 is the World Solidarity Day of Azerbaijanis, a day commemorating the tearing down of border fences between Nakhchivan and Iran in 1989. What’s happened to Nakhchivan since then, and why has its leader recently resigned?

You might not associate leopards with the Caspian countries, but in fact there are two distinct sub-species in the region. Both are very rare, but naturalists and photographers have been gathering ever more evidence of their survival.

Italy is the latest to criticise Iran’s crackdown on protesters. But although Iran might be using softer language recently, it seems that Tehran still sees its heavy-handed policy as successful. Are there any winners in this situation?

Mark Elliott explored the cafe culture of Ganja during his visit to Azerbaijan last month. Turns out it's much more than tea.

One of Eurasia's great flyways funnels migratory birds between the Azerbaijani shore of the Caspian Sea and the steep crag of Besh Barmag. This year an international team of ornithologists spent three months counting them.

The Tashkent International Tourism Fair is the biggest showcase for new ideas in tourism in the Central Asia region. Uzbekistan's Samarkand is set to be the World Tourism Capital in 2023.

This past weekend thousands of Caspian Seals were found dead on the beaches of Dagestan in Russia. Learn a bit more about the endangered species and what might have happened here.

November 8 is "Victory Day" in Azerbaijan, commemorating the day Azerbaijani forces retook the city of Shusha during the 2nd Karabakh War. In this article, Mark Elliott takes us with him to see what's along the road to Shusha.

London’s World Travel Market is a window into the heart of the global tourism industry. This year, the Caspian Region was better represented than ever before.

If both sides step back from semantic arguments, a solution for opening Armenia-Azerbaijan borders could be within reach.

Hackers again hit Iranian state TV this weekend, posting an image of the Supreme Leader in rifle crosshairs. Who is behind the hacks and what is the Albanian connection in this latest round of an undeclared cyber-war?

September’s re-ignition of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has set forth a flurry of international diplomacy. What’s going on and why?

A young musician arrives in an Azerbaijani mountain village in a prize-winning short film called "Leila's Violin," written with a dreamlike magic and stylistic elements reminiscent of the great director Sergei Parajanov.

The Nobel Prize is just one of many legacies of a Swedish family whose investments and remarkable new innovations helped transform Azerbaijan’s oil production from the 1870s, helping Baku to be one of the world’s main petro-cities by 1905.

Vostok 2022, a week of military exercises in far eastern Russia, apparently saw 50,000 men from 14 countries on manoeuvres. Were there really contingents from both Yerevan and Baku?

A group of ancient Christian hemit caves known as Davit Gareja in Georgia and Keshikchidag in Azerbaijan straddles the border on a semi-desert scarp. Could the site’s management offer an opportunity for cultural cooperation?

No, they aren’t assassins, despite what the world was once told by a careless headline writer. A full decade later the non-story of Iran’s lady ninjas continues to reverberate.

‘Welcome home’ to ten Azerbaijani families who on July 19 became the first returnees to move into the high-tech “smart village” of Aghali in the de-occupied Zangilan Region of Karabakh.

Crimean Tatars (2)

Simon Stylites was a 5th century Christian mystic, later celebrated by Tennyson for having spent decades meditating on the top of a pillar. In Katskhi, Georgia, you’ll find a chapel in the sky, refashioned for latter-day Stylites.

Russia's war in Ukraine is just the latest conflict to afflict one of Europe's least know ethnic groups - the Crimean Tatars.

What’s a modern-day gift fit for a king – or queen? Azerbaijan thinks it knows the answer, at least when it comes to Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.

Last weekend experimental techno music fans in Uzbekistan became champions for publicizing one of the world’s most dire ecological catastrophes. How? Simply by attending the ultra-remote Stiha Festival.

Sergei Paradjanov's The Colour of Pomegranates (1968) is a beautifully stylized examination of the 18th-century minstrel poet who went by the pen name 'Sayat Nova.' He composed songs in Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian and other languages.