Saakashvili asks Zelenskyy to put him on list of civilian prisoners
Georgia's third president (2004-2013), former head of Odesa Regional Administration Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been in a Georgian correctional facility since Wednesday, appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to add him to the list of civilian prisoners of war in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
"From the very beginning of this great war, the Russian oligarch Ivanishvili and his lackeys have openly sided with Russia. In this context, it is absolutely clear that my persecution and my fate are linked to the war. I am a citizen of Ukraine and the head of the executive committee of the National Reform Council, where I had the honor of serving under your leadership. I would like to ask you, just as in 2019, when you restored my illegally revoked citizenship, to please include me, as the former head of Odesa Regional State Administration and the chairman of the executive committee of the National Reform Council, who is illegally held by the pro-Russian regime in Georgia, in the list of civilian prisoners of this war, with the corresponding legal consequences," Saakashvili said on Facebook.
He recalled that on Wednesday he was transferred from the prison hospital, where he was being treated for severe poisoning, back to the prison – "to the very staff who poisoned me." "My poisoning in March 2022 occurred shortly after the start of a full-scale war. The fact of the poisoning was confirmed by American and German laboratories. Putin demanded reprisals against me from the very beginning, and Medvedev and Lavrov repeatedly bragged about my imprisonment," Saakashvili noted.
According to him, he was arrested "on a completely fictitious charge, and the then-Georgian Prime Minister directly stated that this case was related to my activities in Ukraine." "In the new criminal case recently opened against me, I, along with others, am accused of sabotage in favor of a foreign hostile state. The case materials contain your statements, as well as statements by Mykhailo Podoliak," Saakashvili added.
He notes that the Georgian authorities "directly declare Ukraine a hostile foreign state."
"I know that Ukrainians don't abandon their own, and I'm counting on you," Saakashvili concluded.
