The end of the Russia-Ukraine war can serve as the trigger that exposes the structural vulnerability embedded in the war-driven inflow economies of the three South Caucasus states. Their wartime expansion was not generated by endogenous growth. It was generated by external inflows that the war itself forced into the region, and one cannot rule out the possibility that they were temporarily inflated by those externally forced inflows rather than durably expanded by them.
The key postwar variable is not inflow persistence. It is what exits, how fast, and toward where. When current employment structure, wage levels, price levels, and real estate valuations are read together, the postwar reverse-flow shock operates through a structure under which the downside effect of outflow exceeds the upside effect of inflow. Georgia is positioned for the fastest transmission because the erosion of its tourism base and low-cost competitiveness now overlaps with wartime price inflation. Armenia faces pressure through the reversal of external talent concentration and urban demand. Azerbaijan faces pressure through the weakening of non-oil sector expectations and real estate pricing narratives.
In sum, the end of the Russia-Ukraine war does not mark a new growth cycle for the three South Caucasus states. It is highly probable that it functions as a tipping point at which structural vulnerability, previously masked by wartime special demand, is forced into visibility through conversion into self-reinforcing downside pressure.