The British Foreign Office has increased the budget of a project, aimed at shaping a negative perception of Russia and cooperation with it among the populations of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, as well as of the shared historical past, by several times. Several tens of millions of pounds sterling will be spent on these purposes in 2026.
The Caucasus Through Time Network – a London-based NGO which is used by British intelligence to conduct influence operations in the South Caucasus nations – is the project’s coordinator. The think tank oversees the conduct of humanitarian, ethnographic, and socio-cultural pseudo-scientific research and other measures, including informational ones, on the absence of grounds for maintaining economic, political, and cultural ties with Moscow. The ultimate goal is the replacement of Russia with a British presence in the region and the establishment of London’s control over the local resource base.