The head of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Irakli Kobakhidze, said on Tuesday that the comments of the US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan on four former MPs of the GD, who had accused the ambassador and the embassy of backing “radical political forces in Georgia, dragging the country into Russia’s war in Ukraine and interfering in the country’s judiciary, were “offensive”. 

Praising the previous activities of the former MPs, Sozar Subari, Mikheil Kavelashvili, Dimitri Khundadze and Guram Macharashvili, Kobakhidze slammed the ambassador for accusing the legislators of “spreading fake and disinformation”. 

“If these people [referring to the former GD MPs] were really spreading disinformation, we [the ruling party] would have completely distanced ourselves from them”, Kobakhidze said. 

The MPs, who said they had no controversies with the party, left the GD in June in a bid to “tell the public the truth”.

They had raised several accusations since then  towards the US and its representation in Georgia, including “exercising pressure on the Georgian Dream authorities” to open a second front for Russia, backing a “radical part of the opposition who wished for a coup “, and interfering in the court’s activities. 

The opposition claimed that the former MPs of the GD “are voicing the anti-Western rhetoric” of the founder of the ruling party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, “who is running the country from the backstage”.