Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded that former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili be allowed to go to Ukraine for treatment. He recalled that Saakashvili has Ukrainian citizenship. Zelensky ordered the Foreign Ministry to summon the Georgian ambassador to Kyiv and order him to leave Ukraine within 48 hours for consultations in Tbilisi on the issue.
The reason for Zelensky’s statement was another court hearing in the Saakashvili case on Monday. The former Georgian president attended it via video link from the Vivamed clinic. In the video, Saakashvili looks extremely emaciated. According to the Georgian service of Radio Liberty, the politician began his speech in Ukrainian, and then made political statements and asked parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili to apologize for “being brought to this condition”.
In his tweet, Zelensky said that “Russia is killing Ukrainian citizen Mikhail Saakashvili with the hands of the Georgian authorities”, and recalled that Kiev had repeatedly asked Tbilisi to agree to Saakashvili’s return to Ukraine, while Western partners offered their options.
