South Caucasus at the Crossroads of Geo-Strategical Interests: New Era of Regional Security or New Challenges to Peace-Building?

The paper explores the new situation emerged in South Caucasus region after the 44-days war in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, three conflicts broke out in South Caucasus, and none of them is not yet settled. This fact makes the region more unstable, deeply volatile and continually disintegrated. The political regimes of intra and extra-regional countries, especially regional autocratic ones, have a negative impact on conflict resolution and peace-building process in South Caucasus.The whole potential of this region can't be revealed and exploited without settling frozen and/or unfrozen conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. The unsolved conflicts will lead to a permanent regional instability and uncertainty by giving chance to extra-regional actors for the use of their geo-strategical interests. The regional instability is transformed into a stable tool for the extra-regional actors, especially autocratic ones, to interfere and to keep pseudo-mediation by promoting their own interests.The issues of regional communications’ unblocking, borders’ demarcation and delimitation as well as regional integration possibilities are discussed. The exploration of these issues showcased the need for a common platform or practically experienced concept of regional peace-building that have to be shared by all regional countries.