No War, No Peace? Rethinking Power, Violence, and the Prospects for Peace in the South Caucasus

Join us for the CENTREPEACE project’s public lecture titled No War, No Peace? Rethinking Power, Violence, and the Prospects for Peace in the South Caucasus!

The lecture will take place on Tuesday, 12 August, from 15:00 to 16:30 EEST (UTC+3) in Humina, 3rd floor, C wing (Room C324), Metsätalo, Unioninkatu 40. You can also participate online.

Register for the event here by 10 August: registration form

The lecture will be given by Dr. Zinaida Bechná, Assistant Professor and researcher at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czechia, and coordinator of the CENTREPEACE project. A Q&A session will follow the lecture.

ABSTRACT: Long defined by vicious cycles of violence and the intricate interplay of internal grievances with external power rivalries, the South Caucasus remains one of Eurasia’s most strategically contested and fragile regions. Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has further unsettled this volatile landscape, disrupting entrenched conflict configurations and challenging long-held geopolitical assumptions. This lecture explores whether the repercussions of the war in Ukraine signify a substantive inflection point toward sustainable peace, driven by shifting external alignments, or whether they merely constitute a transitional phase that obscures entrenched structural vulnerabilities and introduces novel vectors of foreign interference. It critically assesses how Russia’s strategic distraction and recalibrated regional presence are reshaping the security architecture of the South Caucasus, generating both unexpected opportunities for re- or de-escalation of “frozen” conflicts and new, more diffuse threats to stability. By tracing the impacts of external geopolitical shocks across domestic political and security arenas, the lecture offers a nuanced understanding of evolving conflict dynamics: examining how shifting power balances are transforming the tools, incentives, and vulnerabilities of regional actors. In doing so, it advances the case for a more agile and strategically grounded Western engagement, particularly by the European Union, and the reassertion of its role as a normative force within an increasingly fluid and fragmented geopolitical order.

Dr. Zinaida Bechná is an Assistant Professor and researcher at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czechia. She is coordinator of the EU-funded Horizon Twinning project CENTREPEACE (Central and Eastern Europe Security Cooperation Cluster) and a core team member of the EU co-funded project INTERFER (Foreign Interference in the Context of Geopolitical and Technological Change). Her research primarily focuses on conflict figurational analysis within the post-Soviet contexts, examining threat perceptions, NATO expansion, and the foreign and national security strategies of South Caucasus states.