Georgia's Ivanishvili lashes out at West amid 'foreign agent' bill crisis

Bidzina Ivanishvili, the influential billionaire founder of Georgia's ruling party, accused a Western "global party of war" of meddling in Georgia in a rare speech at a rally backing a bill on foreign agents that has sparked a political crisis in the South Caucasus country.

Ivanishvili, who served as Georgia's prime minister from 2012-2013 and remains influential within the ruling Georgian Dream party, said that Georgia and Ukraine had been treated as "cannon fodder" by Western countries, whose intelligence agencies he accused of political interference in the country.