Tbilisi Calls Responding to Kyiv's Insults Over Saakashvili a Matter of Honor

The president of the ruling "Georgian Dream" party, Irakli Kobakhidze, has labeled Kyiv's calls to transfer its citizen, former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is serving a six-year prison sentence, to Ukraine for medical treatment as "shameful," according to Vz.ru.

"Should we send him to Bakhmut for treatment? To Kyiv or Lviv? It is shameful. It is a matter of honor for us to respond to such disgraceful statements from Ukrainian officials," he said in an interview with Georgian Public Television.

Kobakhidze reminded that the Georgian Ministry of Justice had offered Saakashvili and his associates the opportunity to invite any foreign doctors to Tbilisi, but there has been no response to this offer. He noted that the former president, who has been transferred from prison to the Vivamed clinic in Tbilisi, is in "excellent condition."

According to him, Ukraine's calls to send Saakashvili for treatment are simply a mockery. The ruling party leader stated that no diagnosis of the former president justifies delaying his sentence.

He pointed out that the former president is merely "intentionally losing weight." The president of the "Georgian Dream" added that Saakashvili's family has already paid over $900,000 to a lobbying firm in the U.S. for the former president's release, but these efforts have been in vain.

Commenting on statements from Ukraine's Foreign Ministry urging Georgian authorities to "immediately stop settling political accounts with Saakashvili and hand him over to Ukraine," the committee chair noted that such announcements "contradict the spirit of friendship and strategic partnership."

At the same time, he stated that Georgia prefers to refrain from a harsher response, given that Ukraine is in military confrontation with Russia.