The third president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili has appealed to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Saakashvili asks to be included in the list of civilian prisoners of war.
Saakashviliʼs address was published on Facebook.
The day before, he was returned from the prison hospital to prison.
The politician claims that he is being persecuted because of Russiaʼs aggression against Ukraine and is accused of sabotage in favour of a foreign enemy state [Ukraine]. This month, a new criminal case was opened against Saakashvili in Georgia — calls for the overthrow of the government. Among the crimes he is accused of are aiding a foreign state in hostile activities and sabotage.
Saakashvili is asking to be included in the list of prisoners as the former head of the Odesa Regional State Administration and the head of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Reforms, who is "illegally detained by the pro-Russian regime in Georgia".
- Mikheil Saakashvili was the President of Georgia from 2004 to 2013. He renounced his Georgian citizenship in 2013 and became a citizen of Ukraine. In 2021, he returned to Georgia, where he was arrested, because by that time Saakashvili had been convicted in absentia. The ex-president is currently in prison. In July 2023, the Verkhovna Rada asked the President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili to pardon Saakashvili.
- In March 2025, he was also sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison for illegally crossing the Georgian border in October 2021. His total sentence is 12 years and 6 months in prison.
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