Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili made a public appeal to President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, asking to be granted Ukrainian prisoner status.
Georgian authorities announced on Wednesday that Saakashvili had been returned to prison after more than two years in hospital.
The Georgian-Ukrainian politician, who has been convicted of a number of offenses related to his time in office, is expected to remain in prison until 2030.
Writing on Facebook, Saakashvili said that the ruling Georgian Dream party “directly declare Ukraine a foreign enemy state.” The latest of several criminal prosecutions started against him accuses him of sabotage on behalf of a foreign enemy state – referring, he believes, to his political activities in Ukraine.
“From the very beginning of this great war, the Russian oligarch [Georgian Dream founder Bidzina] Ivanishvili and his minions have openly sided with Russia. In this context, it is absolutely obvious that my persecution and my fate are connected with the war,” he said.
In the past, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Council of Europe have supported Saakashvili’s claim that his imprisonment is politically motivated – earlier this year, Council of Europe dubbed him a “political prisoner.”
Mass demonstrations against Georgian Dream’s increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian slant began in the spring of 2023. They broke out again after Georgian Dream won Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections – a result which international observers judged to be fraudulent.
The penalties for protesting have become more and more severe, as Georgian Dream claims that the demonstrations are being orchestrated by foreign intelligence services.
Saakashvili was transferred to hospital not long after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although a 50-day hunger strike had seriously impacted Saakashvili’s health, a US-based toxicologist said after conducting tests that his symptoms had been caused by heavy metal poisoning.
“Yesterday I was transferred from the prison hospital, where I was being treated for severe poisoning, back to the prison – to the staff who poisoned me,” Saakashvili wrote to Zelensky on Thursday.
Zelensky has intervened on Saakashvili’s part before – restoring his Ukrainian citizenship, which had been stripped by Zelensky’s predecessor, as long ago as 2019. More recently, he has demanded that the Georgian authorities transfer Saakashvili to Kyiv.
“I know that Ukrainians do not abandon their own, and I count on you,” Saakashvili ended his appeal.