Zelensky urges Georgia to transfer Saakashvili to Ukraine, says Georgian ambassador will be offered to leave

MOSCOW. July 4 (Interfax) - Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has tasked the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry with summoning the Georgian ambassador in Kiev and voicing protest over the ongoing incarceration of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian media said.

He also tasked the ministry with offering the ambassador to leave Ukraine within 48 hours for consultations.

"We have repeatedly asked official Tbilisi to stop this bullying and agree on the return of Saakashvili to Ukraine. Our partners in coordination with Ukraine have also proposed various rescue options. I instructed the Foreign Ministry today to summon the Georgian ambassador to Ukraine, voice a strong protest to him, and to offer that he leaves Ukraine in within 48 hours for consultations with his capital," the media quoted Zelensky as saying on a social network on Monday.

"The Georgian ambassador will visit the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday morning, there will be a hard talk, and he will go to Georgia. We believe that Georgia should stop harassing Saakashvili and bring him back to us, because he is a citizen of Ukraine," Ukrainian media quoted a statement by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

In turn, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said that the Georgian authorities want to lead Saakashvili to death.

"They are acting by the old Stalin method: 'no person - no problem'," Ukrainian media quoted Kuleba as saying during the national telethon on Monday evening.

The minister said that Kiev had offered Georgia a variety of ways to bring Saakashvili back to Ukraine and other countries had made similar propositions in coordination with Kiev.

"If they [Georgian authorities] see Saakashvili as a threat to domestic politics - let him leave Georgia and live a quiet life in Ukraine or some other country," Kuleba said.

A video of Saakashvili's questioning was released on Monday. He looks very thin.

Saakashvili secretly arrived in Georgia on September 29, 2021. He was detained in Tbilisi on October 1 and put in prison in Rustavi, where he went on a hunger strike. On November 8, he was transferred from the Rustavi prison to a prison infirmary in the Gldani district of Tbilisi without consent of the family and lawyers. On November 20, Saakashvili was transferred to a military hospital in Gori, where he stopped the hunger strike. On May 12, 2022, Saakashvili was transferred to the Vivamedi civilian clinic in Tbilisi. He remains there for now.

Saakashvili is indicted in several criminal cases in Georgia. He calls his detention illegal and says the charges are falsified.