Azerbaijan will have three consecutive non-working days – January 18, 19 and 20. January 20 is the Day of National Mourning in the country.

Former head of Dakhadaevsky district of Dagestan Dzharulla Omarov was sent to pretrial detention. The term of detention is until March 14.

More than a dozen pro-European protests are planned for the weekend in Tbilisi and other Georgian cities. On the 52nd day of protests, the main demand of their participants remains unchanged - holding new parliamentary elections. In addition, protesters are demanding the release of all "prisoners of the regime" arrested during anti-government protests. Let us recall that, according to human rights activists, there are more than 50 of them.

Azerbaijan will take part in the NATO-Georgia-2025 military exercises, which will begin on April 28 at the Krtsanisi base. This is a training center for the Georgian Armed Forces south of Tbilisi in the area of ​​the village of the same name.

The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its report on the human rights situation noted the intensification of repression and torture against journalists and political activists in Azerbaijan. According to human rights activists, in 2024, the wave of arrests of critics of the Azerbaijani authorities continued.

A protest action was held in Yerevan in front of the UN office and the Armenian government demanding that pressure be put on Azerbaijan to release the Armenian defendants. Today, the trial of former State Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh Ruben Vardanyan and other leaders of the unrecognized republic begins in Baku.

The Georgian Embassy in the United Arab Emirates does not confirm the arrest of Georgian Dream MPs Irakli Zarkua and Viktor Sanikidze in Abu Dhabi. The day before, the opposition TV channel Mtavari reported that they were sent to prison pending a court hearing.

The Khimki Court of the Moscow Region has accepted the appeal of lawyer and native of Chechnya Timur Idalov against his sentence. He was previously illegally held in a pretrial detention center.

A resident of the city of Cherepovets in the Vologda region, Lev Bogatishchev, was found guilty of justifying terrorism and sentenced to four years in prison. The charges were based on positive comments about the first president of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and field commander Shamil Basayev.

After a two-month stage in IK-1 in Yakutia, the Crimean Tatar Ruslan Mesutov was placed in a punishment cell.