Definitely its used all the time in english not only for countries but also for companies

In several conversations today i did it when discussing the effect of low oil prices on russia saying things like "it really depends on what moscow does"

This is used a huge amount in american english if you look for example at the west wing they routinely refer to the chinese government as beijing or the russian government as moscow

Its also used when disscussing higher ups in business for example if the company is based in chicago and you working somewhere else when a major decision has to be made they might "call chicago up"