Georgian Lawmakers Throw Punches over Foreign Agent Legislation

In the East European country of Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, chaos instantly erupted inside the parliament as lawmakers threw fists of fury over proposed legislation regarding foreign funding of organizations operating in the country.

On Monday (April 15), short video clips of the incident spread over YouTube, Rumble, and other social media sites. The clips showed a member of Georgia’s ruling party addressing the session to advance a controversial bill when he was assaulted by an opposition lawmaker and punched in the face. The parliament broke into chaos as a scuffle erupted between the lawmakers from different parties.

Reporting on the incident, the BBC wrote:

Opposition leader Aleko Elisashvili punched MP Mamuka Mdinaradze during a debate over a controversial law.

The legislation in question has been dubbed as the “Foreign Agent Law” and it would require all organizations, including media companies, to disclose details of funds received from foreign countries or nationals. In case such organizations receive more than one-fifth of their funding from abroad, the legislation would require them to register as entities pursuing the interests of a foreign power.

Georgia’s ruling coalition of parties, led by the Georgian Dream party, supports the legislation while the opposition has accused the ruling coalition of furthering Russia’s interests in the country.

A year ago, the same legislation was introduced in the Georgian parliament, leading to public protests and riots by its opponents. Owing to the uproar, the Georgian parliament withdrew the legislation.

On his Rumble channel, The New Atlas, independent commentator Brian Berletic called it America’s second front against Russia. As Berletic put it:

The US seeks to stir up trouble in Georgia again to “extend” Russia as explained in detail by the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper, “Extending Russia.”

The United States and the European Union have repeatedly expressed strong criticism of the legislation, arguing that it clashes with their values. Mainstream media in the West have dubbed the legislation as Georgia’s “Russian style foreign agent law,” the term Germany’s Deutsche Welle used for it and cited critics’ concern that it would be used to crackdown on dissent. Russia Today, on the other hand, wrote that the legislation actually requires transparency from NGOs that are financed from abroad.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who politically aligns with the European Union, has stated that she would veto the bill if it was passed by parliament.

The leftist-globalist push for allowing unchecked foreign funding in Georgia applies to Ukraine by multiple connections. In March 2022, The Gateway Pundit published an investigation that financially linked George Soros, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, and Burisma Holdings – the natural gas company in Ukraine that hired Hunter Biden while his father Joe Biden was the Vice President of the United States. The report of the investigation wrote:

After Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoisky , who had spent the last few years living between Israel and Switzerland, returned to Ukraine to keep up his relationship with the new president, nominating over 30 lawmakers to Zelensky’s newly established party and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament,