The website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine published a statement regarding the threat to the life of Ukrainian citizen Mikheil Saakashvili.

 "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses a strong protest against the inhumane treatment of Ukrainian citizen Mikheil Saakashvili, who is being held behind bars in Georgia.

 In the worst traditions of the NKVD of the USSR, the Georgian authorities apply psychological and physical violence to Mikheil Saakashvili, deny him urgently needed medical assistance, deliberately creating a direct threat to his life.

 The gross violation of human rights against a Ukrainian citizen goes against the declared course of Tbilisi for EU membership, and indicates the collapse of democracy in Georgia.

 We call on the Georgian authorities to immediately stop abusing Mikheil Saakashvili and hand him over to Ukraine. Don't play with a person's life for political revenge.

 We also appeal to foreign governments and international organizations to publicly defend the Ukrainian citizen, the former president of Georgia, whose life was in danger due to political repression by the Georgian authorities," the statement reads.

 We will remind that the ex-president of Georgia and citizen of Ukraine Mikheil Saakashvili has been behind bars since October 2021, after his secret return to Georgia on the eve of local elections.

 He went on hunger strike, insisting that he had been imprisoned on political charges. Saakashvili was temporarily transferred to the prison hospital, and then to the military hospital in Gori, and from December 2021 he was returned to the prison in Rustav. Since May, he has been in a hospital in Tbilisi, where he was transferred from the pre-trial detention center in Rustav. In November, lawyer Valery Gelbachiani, referring to the results of the examination, said that the former president of Georgia was poisoned after his arrest.

 On February 1, Mikheil Saakashvili showed the consequences of his stay in prison. In the video, he looks very thin and emaciated. After that, during a press conference with Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that the Georgian authorities are "slowly killing" Saakashvili.