In Georgia’s 2012 election, then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pro-Western party was defeated by Georgian Dream, a party led by the Russian-backed oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. Though widely hailed at the time as a democratic triumph, astute observers warned against celebrating. One such observer was Georgia’s former economy minister, the late Kakha Bendukidze, a businessman and philanthropist who wryly remarked that with Ivanishvili’s victory, the country “made a step forward in terms of dem

As the West’s political leaders become increasingly preoccupied with the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, they risk losing their geopolitical influence in a small but strategically significant Black Sea country: Georgia. On April 29, in one of his rare public appearances, Bidzina Ivanishvili – the founder and de facto leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party and a reclusive billionaire – accused the United States and the European Union of being a Western “global war party” and meddling in Geo