Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Tbilisi, Georgia, Nov. 5, 2015 (AP photo by Shakh Aivazov).

In mid-January, Georgian musicians played a concert in front of hundreds of people in downtown Tbilisi to protest the government’s ongoing negotiations with Russian state energy giant Gazprom to increase imports of natural gas. The protests were only the latest in a string of demonstrations going back to last fall, when news of government talks with Gazprom first came to light. According to the Georgian Energy Ministry, its talks with Russia are part of efforts to boost energy supplies amid growing domestic consumption. The Georgian government’s decision to try and buy more Russian gas has emerged as a full-blown controversy […]