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This week on Hold Your Fire! Richard Atwood asks Crisis Group experts how the Ukraine war has affected peacemaking elsewhere, notably Nagorno-Karabakh, where Moscow plays a major diplomatic role, and Libya, where the Kremlin backs one of the conflict’s main protagonists.

Informal trade is increasing between Georgia and the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and between Abkhazia and countries outside the region. Trade alone cannot transform the parties’ core political differences. But talks among them on mutually beneficial commerce could open lines of communication long cemented shut.

A rare meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on 16 October 2017 could lead to a breakthrough. But the two countries have very different ideas on how to reconcile their competing narratives and goals in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Six months into research fellowships made possible by Canadian philanthropist and Crisis Group Trustee Frank Giustra, we catch up with the three young experts now working with our Europe, Africa and Middle East teams. Olesya Vartanyan is specialising on her native South Caucasus.

Unresolved conflicts and breakaway territories divide five out of six of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership countries, most of them directly backed by the Russian Federation. But a policy of isolating the people living in these conflict regions narrows the road to peace.

Crisis Group's Russia & North Caucasus Project Director Ekaterina Sokirianskaia discusses the key findings our recently released report, Chechnya: The Inner Abroad, and the future potential for violence that stems from the precarious and asymmetrical relationship between Russia and its small border republic.

The recent bombings in the south of Russia could prove a precursor to more violence and instability in the Caucasus if Moscow does not abandon repression for political dialogue.

Lawrence Sheets, South Caucasus Project Director, talks about Crisis Group's work in the South Caucasus, promoting communication across the lines of the region's most intractable conflicts.