Zelensky instructed the Foreign Ministry to protest the Georgian ambassador over the situation with Saakashvili

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky instructed the country’s Foreign Ministry to express a strong protest to the Georgian ambassador over the situation with former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. The Ukrainian president announced this on his Telegram channel.

“We have repeatedly called on official Tbilisi to stop this bullying and agree on the return of Saakashvili to Ukraine. Our coordinating partners with Ukraine also offered various rescue options,” Zelensky wrote.

He also said that as part of the order, the Foreign Ministry would have to give the ambassador an order to leave the country within 48 hours for consultations with the Georgian authorities. “I call on the Georgian authorities to transfer Ukrainian citizen Mikheil Saakashvili to Ukraine for the necessary treatment and care. And I urge our partners to turn, not to ignore this situation and save this person,” the President of Ukraine added.

Today, July 3, Saakashvili for the first time in a long time took part remotely in a meeting of the Tbilisi City Court, where he showed his emaciated body, and also called on the Georgian authorities to apologize for bringing him to such a state. “You must apologize to the members of the European Parliament, to my family, to me, to Ukraine, of which I am a citizen, for bringing me to this state,” he said.

The meeting was held on the case of dispersing an opposition rally on November 7, 2007. Saakashvili was detained in Georgia on October 1, 2021. He returned to the country shortly before the first round of municipal elections. Initially, the politician was in the prison of the city of Rustavi, and in May 2022 he was transferred to a Tbilisi clinic for a medical examination. Doctors revealed a spinal injury in him, the ex-president of Georgia needed an operation.

Saakashvili, who served as President of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, faced several criminal cases in the country, in two of which he was sentenced to a total of nine years in prison. In early 2018, he was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison in connection with the 2006 murder of an employee of the United Bank of Georgia. The politician was found guilty of abuse of office. In June of the same year, he received another six years in prison for the 2005 beating of opposition MP Valery Gelashvili.