When Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich decided not to sign the association agreement with the European Union and instead opted for a Russian package of long-term economic support, many Ukrainians perceived this not to be a purely economic decision. Rather, they feared this to be a renunciation of Western cultural and political values, and – to put it mildly – were not happy about this development.

On February 25, 2014, ISET hosted Dr. Sergei Izmalkov of the Moscow New Economic School. Dr. Izmalkov, who works with the most popular Russian search engine, Yandex, presented a paper he co-authored with Dmitry Arkhanglesky, Dilyara Khakimova, and Sergey Lyashenko, titled: “On the evaluation of click-through rates and conversion rates of different positions in sponsored search auctions”.

Few events in Georgian history had consequences that were as far-reaching as the infamous Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783. At the end of the 18th century, Erekle II. (1720-1798) handed over his kingdom of Kakheti and Kartli to the Russians, aligning the fates of Georgia and Russia for the next two centuries.

We are very happy to post the second part of Jacques Fleury's commentary on the Georgian Wine Industry. In the first part, Jacques reflected on the experience of surviving the Russian embargo, on the one hand, and dealing with a series of heavy-handed and incompetent government interventions, on the other.

A few days after the beginning of the August 2008 war with Russia, I found myself on an epic journey through Kvemo Kartli and the volcanic plateau of Samtkhe-Javakheti to Turkey.