By Irakli Kiknavelidze and Tomáš Baranec

Ilia II of the Georgian Orthodox Church (GeOC) died on 17 March. Over nearly five decades, he consolidated the Church’s position as one of Georgia’s most influential and trusted institutions. His tenure was characterized by a dominant patriarchate, a relatively constrained Holy Synod, and a cautious approach to partisan politics and foreign policy alignment. The accession of Shio III marks the beginning of a new era for the GeOC, bringing expectations of a redefined balance between the patriarch and the synod, as well as potential consequences arising from the Church’s increased engagement in domestic and international politics.

BACKGROUND:

Under the 1995 Statute of Administration of the GeOC, the Holy Synod plays the central role in the election of the Patriarch. It is responsible for nominating three candidates and is the only body granted voting rights within the Extended Council, which selects the final candidate. All other participants, unlike under the pre-1995 system, serve solely in an advisory capacity.

Ideologically, the Holy Synod can currently be divided into three principal blocs. The conservative bloc is characterised by a dogmatic stance on cultural and ethical issues, scepticism towards Western integration, and, to varying degrees, openness to cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

The national-conservative bloc often adopts an even more dogmatic position on cultural and ethical issues than the conservative bloc, while remaining strongly anti-Russian. Consequently, it is particularly sceptical of both the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Georgia’s integration with Western institutions.

The liberal bloc, the smallest of the three, advocates more moderate positions on socio-ethical issues and is broadly supportive of Georgia’s political integration with Western institutions.

A heterogeneous yet numerically significant group within the Holy Synod consists of centrists, whose members are generally less ideologically committed and more pragmatic in their outlook than those belonging to the principal ideological blocs.

At its session on April 28, the Holy Synod nominated three candidates for the patriarchate, broadly reflecting the three principal ideological currents within the Church. Metropolitan Shio Mujiri, backed by the conservative wing, received 20 votes. The national-conservative bloc nominated Iob Akiashvili, who secured 7 votes, while the liberal wing put forward Grigol Berbichashvili, who also received 7 votes.

In the final vote held on 11 May, Metropolitan Shio Mujiri was elected head of the GeOC with 22 votes. Metropolitan Iob received nine votes, while Metropolitan Grigol secured seven. Mujiri was enthroned the following day, assuming the title Shio III.

IMPLICATIONS:

As one of the few senior figures within the GeOC to have received theological education in Russia, Shio has frequently been portrayed in the media as “Moscow’s candidate,” a characterisation openly used by Archbishop Zenon Iarajuli, among others. Critics have also pointed to his close relationship with Georgia’s ruling party. In contrast, Patriarch Ilia II maintained close ties with the Georgian state as an institution while generally avoiding overt alignment with any particular political party.

The accession of Shio III can be regarded as a significant success for the ROC, particularly with respect to the question of recognising the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which is a fully independent, autocephalous national church. Both of Shio’s rivals, Iob and Grigol, stated that they would support recognition of the OCU’s independence if elected. Shio, by contrast, avoided taking a public position on the issue during the election process. Given his longstanding ties to the ROC, it appears unlikely that he will endorse recognition of the OCU and will instead support the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). As a result, the ROC can expect continued support from the GeOC on an issue of major strategic importance to Moscow, potentially for decades to come.

To an extent that remains uncertain, Shio’s accession is also likely to ensure the continuation of relatively close relations between the two Churches and to preserve a degree of ROC influence within the GeOC, at least intellectually and ideologically. 

Compared with Ilia II, the new Patriarch’s initial public statements and appearances indicate that he may adopt a more uncompromisingly conservative stance, which will be difficult to reconcile with Georgia’s integration with Western institutions.

In this way, Shio may contribute to the strengthening of anti-Western attitudes among segments of the Georgian population. Such a development would align with Russia’s broader geopolitical interests while simultaneously reinforcing the legitimacy of the ruling Georgian Dream party among parts of its domestic constituency.

Even before his accession, Shio departed from Ilia II’s principle of supporting state institutions rather than specific political parties. Moreover, unlike Ilia II, Shio III is likely to enter his relationship with Bidzina Ivanishvili, the de facto leader of the ruling party, as a junior partner, at least initially.

An important factor in assessing the outlook of the new Patriarch is his background as a black (monastic) priest. Orthodox monasticism has traditionally been closer to the ROC (which is based on monasticism) than to the Greek Orthodox Church, which relies more heavily on white (married parish) clergy. As a result, Shio’s affinity with the Russian Orthodox world extends beyond his education in Russia. Whereas Ilia II’s faith was based on "Georgian Orthodoxy;" a faith with regard to the interests of the state, Shio III emphasizes Orthodoxy as a superior and supranational religious identity.

Shio III’s ties to Russia and support for the government appear to stem from deeply held personal convictions rather than political expediency. Consequently, a significant shift in these positions during his patriarchate is unlikely.

Nevertheless, the impact of Shio’s enthronement is likely to remain limited, at least during the initial years of his patriarchate. The fact that, after the first round of voting, when his victory had become virtually certain, there was no significant shift of centrist support in his favour (his tally increased by only two votes) suggests that members of the Holy Synod are not subservient to the new Patriarch and are prepared to oppose him if necessary.

Shio III has yet to display the political acumen that characterised Ilia II. His leadership is constrained by dogmatism and introversion, although he has shown an ability to rely on politically skilled allies and possesses some political instinct. The first major challenges of his patriarchate will reveal which of these traits proves more influential.

The GeOC will soon face several important internal challenges, including the appointment of seven vacant episcopal positions and the reform of the 1995 Statute of Administration. While there is broad agreement within the Holy Synod that the current statute requires revision, opinions differ sharply regarding its replacement. In addition, some bishops are actively advocating for the Church to publicly call for the release of political prisoners.

None of these issues falls within Shio III’s formal authority to decide unilaterally. To advance his preferred policies, he will need to secure the support of the Holy Synod. His handling of these challenges will provide an indication of his ability to shape the Church in accordance with his worldview.

CONCLUSIONS:

If Shio III consolidates his position, he could enable greater Russian influence within the GeOC and bolster the legitimacy of Georgian Dream among conservative voters. In the long term, however, this may weaken the Church’s broader social authority and deepen political polarization in Georgia.

In an alternative scenario, the Holy Synod could gain influence at the expense of the Patriarch. Even so, a major shift in the Church’s domestic or foreign policy positions is unlikely, as the recent patriarchal election demonstrated the continued dominance of the conservative wing within the Synod.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Tomáš Baranec is a Research Fellow and Head of the Caucasus Program of the Slovak think tank Strategic Analysis. He worked for several years as a field researcher on the Georgian-Ossetian ABL. Tomas studied Balkan, Central European and Eurasian Studies at Charles University in Prague. 

Irakli Kiknavelidze is a Georgian journalist, television host, political commentator, and media professional specializing in Georgian politics, democracy, religion, and South Caucasus affairs. He has worked in television, print, and digital media, producing interviews, analysis, and public affairs programming. Throughout his career, Kiknavelidze has focused on political developments, international relations, and the intersection of religion and public life in Georgia.

By Stephen Blank

The Pakistan-Afghanistan war, on top of the war against Iran, is forcing Moscow to attempt to balance its security and economic interests in and beyond Central Asia with both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan is critical to Russia because it provides an alternative to Iran, allowing Moscow’s transcontinental trade project INSTC to move forward and offering a gateway to Asia. Concurrently, Moscow has upgraded its ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan both to deter ISIS-K terrorists and to secure broader geostrategic aims. Yet it also increasingly appears that Moscow is willing to offer Afghanistan arms, ostensibly to deter terrorists. However, in the broader regional context, this move underscores Moscow’s propensity for playing a double game with and against its partners.

BACKGROUND:

The Iran war and Pakistan’s war with Afghanistan threaten the further erosion of Russian influence in Central Asia. Consequently, Russia has embarked on what can only be called a double game vis-à-vis Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan has attacked Afghanistan because it claims Afghanistan harbors the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist group, which performs attacks against Pakistan. This complaint is more than a little ironic given Pakistan’s own long-standing and well-known record of sponsoring terrorism against India.  More significant, however, is the fact that this charge, if true, signifies that Kabul has escaped Islamabad’s tutelage. However, the war also disrupts Russia’s ambition to sell Russian gas to South and Southeast Asia through pipelines traversing Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

At the same time, Russia has steadily built a “full-fledged” and “pragmatic” partnership with Afghanistan to prevent it from sponsoring terrorist groups like ISIS-K and their targeting of Russia and Central Asia, where Russia still claims to be the ultimate security manager.  According to Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, full-fledged partnership includes bilateral defense and security cooperation. Indeed, Shoigu openly proclaimed Russia’s opposition to any third-party military presence in Afghanistan or neighboring countries, a shot across both Pakistan’s and the U.S.’s bow and a sign of its ambition to establish a protectorate over Afghanistan.

However, Russia’s interests transcend defense. The war against Iran has ruptured the feasibility of Russia’s, Iran’s and India’s major transit, trade and connectivity route through Central Asia and then through Russia to Europe, the INSTC (multi-modal International North-South Transportation Corridor). The other existing corridor, the increasingly lucrative Middle Corridor or TITR (Trans-Caspian International Transport Route) from China to Central Asia and then to the Caucasus and Europe bypasses Russia. Thus, since failure to find an alternative to Iran for INSTC will have dire geoeconomic and geopolitical consequences for Russia, it has turned to Pakistan for help. Pakistan cannot afford exclusion from transcontinental trade routes and has agreed to explore connecting its port at Gwadar either by land or by sea to INSTC.

IMPLICATIONS:

Moscow typically has sought to have a foot in both camps in every conflict scenario throughout the Global South and the Pakistan-Afghan war is no exception. But this case is far more central to Moscow’s interests than its power projection in for example Africa or the Middle East. In order to maintain its self-appointed “leading position” in Central Asia, it is crucial for Russia to exercise leverage over Afghanistan to deter an outbreak of Islamic terrorism targeting either Central Asia or Russia.

Likewise, it is critical to Russia’s economic health and continuing ability to finance its war against Ukraine and its heavily strained state budget that it continues to find Asian markets for its oil and gas. Doing so also entails developing trade routes like INSTC to Pakistan, India and Southeast Asia, especially given its desire to be acknowledged as an independent Asian power. Therefore, balancing between Pakistan and Afghanistan while developing alternatives to Iran’s connectivity have become requirements of Russian policies to realize vital Russian interests, especially as its economy is reeling and its position in Central Asia erodes.

Further erosion is inevitable if Islamic terrorism “migrates” to Central Asia without Moscow being able to deter or stop it. By the same token, exclusion from transcontinental trade routes will undermine Moscow’s ideological and rhetorical pretense of hegemony, and demonstrate that Russia lacks the means in terms of tangible material capability to back up its arguments or sustain a position that answers to Central Asia’s most pressing questions, i.e. economic development.

Concurrently, if Russia cannot develop let alone sustain viable, economically justifiable outreach to South and Southeast Asia, its hard-won influence and standing in those countries will diminish by an order of magnitude, negating its claims of being an Asian power and making it still more dependent on China.

Despite its vital need to keep the balance between Pakistan and Afghanistan, many recent reports suggest that Moscow is secretly negotiating an arms deal with the Taliban. Ostensibly, the aim would be to use the weapons to suppress ISIS-K and prevent further terrorist strikes in Central Asia and or Russia. While this makes sense if leveraging Russia’s Central Asian position and ambitions vis-à-vis Afghanistan are the priority; in reality, it highlights the priority of security over economic development in Russian policy.  It also illustrates the abiding temptation to make secret deals involving the security services or force structures as primary instruments of foreign policy.

Given the Taliban’s track record, it is unlikely that it can or will hold up its end of the bargain. Moreover, should these reports be true this news will enrage Pakistan and likely torpedo efforts to have it join INSTC. That trade project, unlike the Middle Corridor, never got off the ground and is therefore already being eclipsed. This has gravely serious and negative implications for Russia and is likely to aggravate all the trends making for the decline of Russian power in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as South and Southeast Asia. 

An arms deal with the Taliban will further entrench the belief among governments who monitor Russian behavior that Moscow is cannot be relied on as a partner. It will also confirm the notion held by many Western governments that Russia, like the Soviet Union, remains a sponsor of state terrorism and must, at best, be kept at arm’s length.

CONCLUSIONS:

Thus Russia continues to play a double game towards its partners, attempting to have both an empire and prosperous foreign trade relations, even though their logics are quite incompatible. Moscow also has yet to grasp that it cannot denounce and support terrorism at the same time without paying an incommensurate price for its quest after short-term gains. In Central Asia, Russia still seeks to pursue wildly contradictory aims without paying the price for doing so. If Moscow does, in fact, arm the Afghan government, it will once again be playing with dynamite.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, www.fpri.org.

By Joseph Epstein

On June 7, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party won the country’s parliamentary elections with just under 50 percent of the vote, enough under Armenia’s electoral system to govern alone with a comfortable majority. The nearest challenger, the Strong Armenia bloc fronted by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, trailed near 23 percent, and every opposition force that cleared the threshold campaigned on some version of repairing ties with Moscow. Civil Contract cast the vote as a choice between a return to Russia’s orbit and a more independent Armenia drawn toward the West, and the electorate sided with the latter. Yet the win alone will not seal Armenia’s fate. The country must still pass the constitutional change widely seen as the final barrier to normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey, and Pashinyan’s victory does not mean Russia will quietly concede a country it has dominated for two centuries.

BACKGROUND:

Armenia under Pashinyan has moved steadily away from Russia, above all since the 2020 defeat to Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War, a forty-four-day conflict that cost Yerevan roughly three-quarters of the territory Armenian forces had held since the early 1990s. The remainder of Karabakh fell in September 2023, when Azerbaijan retook the enclave and more than one hundred thousand ethnic Armenians fled. Out of that collapse Pashinyan built the vision he calls “Real Armenia” versus “Historic Armenia”: the argument that unless the country relinquishes irredentist claims on its neighbors, it will never enjoy genuine independence.

Pashinyan is often cast as the ideological successor to Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who late in his tenure pushed for a settlement with Azerbaijan to end Armenia’s isolation and strip Russia of its ability to leverage the conflict. He warned, almost prophetically, that Armenia would one day be forced to ask for what it was then rejecting and would not receive it, “as it has happened more than once in our history.” That push cost him his office and triggered the rise of the Karabakh-born politicians who ruled until the Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan to power in 2018. Ter-Petrosyan was right too early, and Armenia paid for it in 2020.

Pashinyan, who early in his premiership pushed for unification with Karabakh, reversed course entirely after the war, concluding that the only way forward was a deal with the stronger party. That trajectory produced the breakthrough of August 8, 2025, when Trump hosted Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the White House, where the two leaders initialed a peace agreement and committed to a U.S.-brokered connectivity project across southern Armenia.

One obstacle remains, and it is constitutional. Armenia’s constitution, through a preamble invoking the 1990 Declaration of Independence and, with it, the 1989 act of “reunification” with Karabakh, still carries an implicit claim to territory that the entire international community—Armenia included—recognizes as Azerbaijani, and over which Baku reestablished full control in 2023. Removing that language is less an Azerbaijani demand than a load-bearing element of the peace process itself: so long as a founding document lays claim to a neighbor’s recognized land, the conflict cannot be considered definitively closed.

IMPLICATIONS:

The step is not the aberration its critics suggest. Other democracies have rewritten founding texts to settle territorial disputes: Ireland surrendered its constitutional claim to Northern Ireland by referendum in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement, and a reunifying Germany renounced its claims east of the Oder-Neisse line to normalize relations with Poland. What makes Armenia’s case hard is procedure and politics, not principle. Its Constitutional Court has ruled the preamble immutable, so the only path is an entirely new constitution, ratified by national referendum. Civil Contract has the votes, and a draft shorn of the preamble was finalized in March 2026. The referendum, expected around 2027, is the real test, and Pashinyan’s task is to sell it at home as the completion of the peace rather than a capitulation to it. Clear that hurdle, and Armenia gains overland access to Europe and Central Asia.

Moscow, however, will not concede, and recent reporting shows how much it was willing to spend even as its war in Ukraine strained its resources. OCCRP traced an influence operation, through leaked documents, to Russia’s Social Design Agency—already sanctioned in Washington, London, and Brussels—working under the direction of the Presidential Administration. The agency ran a dedicated outlet aimed at Armenian dual citizens living in Russia, a bloc its own planning documents called potentially decisive, blending fabricated scandals with AI-generated content. The Insider identified the officials managing the Armenia portfolio and the officers dispatched to Yerevan, alongside a plan to bus Russian Armenians in to swing the result.

The influence campaign ran in parallel with economic coercion. At an April Kremlin meeting, Putin told Pashinyan that Armenia could not belong to both the EU and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, citing discounted gas as leverage. Moscow then restricted imports of Armenian produce, flowers, mineral water, and alcohol on pretextual grounds and threatened to scrap the 2013 agreement guaranteeing duty-free gas, oil, and diamonds. At the Union’s summit in Astana in late May, Putin invoked the “Ukrainian scenario” and demanded that Yerevan choose. Armenia’s own history supplies a darker warning: in October 1999, gunmen stormed the National Assembly and killed Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Speaker Karen Demirchyan, whose reformist coalition had just sidelined then-President Kocharyan, who consolidated power in the aftermath—a reminder that an inconvenient reform government can be removed by means other than the ballot box. Russia retains real leverage over Armenia’s economy and a meaningful share of its population, and it has now demonstrated its capacity to run sophisticated active measures inside the country.

Against that pressure, U.S. engagement has been unprecedented. In February, JD Vance became the first sitting U.S. vice president to visit Armenia, advancing a civil nuclear deal and offering Yerevan a place in a U.S.-led critical minerals bloc. In late May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a strategic partnership charter and the corridor framework in Yerevan, and days later Trump issued his “complete and total endorsement” of Pashinyan—the first time a U.S. president has openly backed a leader squarely within Russia’s traditional sphere. The centerpiece is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a roughly twenty-seven-mile corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province that would link the main body of Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and onward to Turkey, built and operated by a development company in which the U.S. holds 74 percent for an initial forty-nine-year term. Passage of the constitutional change would give Washington its strongest position in the South Caucasus since independence and, through TRIPP, a chokepoint of the Middle Corridor just as securing non-Chinese supply lines for critical minerals has become a first-order priority.

CONCLUSIONS:

Armenia’s voters made the choice Civil Contract asked of them and handed the U.S. a strategic opening that did not exist a year ago. But an election is not a settlement. The referendum still lies ahead, carrying a real chance of failure, and Russia has shown it will spend, subvert, and coerce to keep Armenia within its grip; it will not stop because one vote went against it. For Washington, the work is beginning rather than ending. The endorsements and signing ceremonies were the easy part. Converting them into a durable foothold means seeing the constitutional process through, hardening Armenia against the next wave of Russian active measures, and breaking ground on TRIPP before the window closes. Pashinyan has staked his country’s future on the West, and the U.S. has every reason, and a narrowing amount of time, to ensure that bet pays off.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center, a Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, an Expert at the N7 Foundation, and a Research Fellow at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.