TBILISI, GEORGIA—On 24 July 2026, the European Union gave Georgia's only oil refinery six months to stop processing Russian crude, the clearest sign yet that the Black Sea assets Georgia meant to use as leverage have become a liability. A short flight to the south-west, Turkey is doing the opposite: expanding its authority over the Bosphorus, negotiating gas terms with a weakened Gazprom from a position of strength, and building a second overland route to the Caspian that no longer needs Georgia. The same geography that once made both countries hard to ignore is now pulling them apart.
A Corridor Georgia Was Built to Own
Since the Soviet collapse, three projects have moved Caspian oil, gas and freight around Russia and Iran: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the South Caucasus Pipeline, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. All three needed Georgia. That need was Georgia's main strategic asset—it is what kept Western money and diplomatic attention flowing into a small country beside a much larger neighbour.
That exclusivity is now ending, on a timetable Tbilisi does not set. Construction has begun on the Zangezur Corridor, a US-brokered rail and road link through southern Armenia that will connect Azerbaijan to Turkey without touching Georgian territory. Engineers from the American firm AECOM were in Armenia in mid-July, surveying the route with Armenian officials. Once finished, the new corridor could cut delivery times by around a day compared with the traditional Baku-Tbilisi-Kars line—a modest saving, but a clear signal to shippers that Georgia's near-monopoly on East-West Caucasus transit will not last.