New Year’s is the main winter holiday in the post-Soviet world, after the communists took Christmas customs and melded them into the more secular January 1. But Georgia’s mekvle tradition long predates this shift.
With a park, garbage trucks, and now a waste-processing facility, watchdog groups are questioning the city government’s many gifts from politically connected businessmen.
The Georgian government held a mass demonstration partly to claim that its supporters can outnumber protesters, a well-established tactic in Georgia’s political playbook.
Turkmenistan is eager to gin up some good vibes as another year of shortages and economic stagnation draws to a close. But even when wares appear in the market, the problem is finding cash.
Wire companies that transfer billions in remittances to Tajikistan each year have largely been unavailable since December 3, following regulatory action by the National Bank of Tajikistan.