Zelenskyy claims Russia “killing” Saakashvili “at the hands” of Georgian gov’t

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday claimed Russia was “killing” Mikheil Saakashvili, the currently imprisoned third president of Georgia who now holds Ukrainian citizenship, “at the hands” of the Georgian government, adding he had tasked his country’s foreign office to summon the Georgian ambassador and send to Tbilisi “within 48 hours” for consultations over handover of the former official. 

 

Zelenskyy’s social media post came following a trial hearing in Tbilisi city court early on Monday over violent dispersal of the opposition rally in Tbilisi in 2007 under Saakashvili’s presidency, where Saakashvili appeared via a video link and accused the government of bringing him  “to this [poor] condition”. 

 

The Georgian officials in response say the former official had been engaged in “self-harm” since his arrest in Tbilisi in October 2021 to facilitate his “illegal release” from prison and that the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in May – which rejected Saakashvili’s transfer abroad on health grounds – had “put an end” to his “fake, damaging and anti-state allegations” on alleged torture and ill-treatement while in custody. 

 

Zelenskyy, who in 2019 restored Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship following his confrontation with former president and ally Petro Poroshenko and subsequent deportation to Poland in 2017, also urged partners to “address this situation and not ignore it and save this man. No government in Europe has the right to execute people, life is a basic European value”. 

 

Saakashvili, who was arrested in Tbilisi ahead of Georgian municipal elections when he served as the chair of the executive committee of the Ukrainian national reforms council, is now serving his six-year term for abuse of power while in office in two separate cases, while three other cases involving him, including the 2007 opposition rally dispersal, are still pending.