Saakashvili returned to prison in Georgia after spending three years in hospital
Photo: Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in hospital (Getty Images)
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has been discharged from a hospital in Tbilisi, where he had been staying since 2022, and sent to prison to serve the sentence imposed on him by the court, according to an official statement from the Georgian Penitentiary Service.
The service stated that on May 12, 2022, Saakashvili was transferred to the Vivamed Clinic in Tbilisi, where he remained under medical supervision. His health is now reportedly "satisfactory," allowing him to be returned to prison.
"Since the health of the convicted Mikheil Saakashvili is satisfactory and he no longer requires inpatient treatment, he has been discharged from the civilian clinic and returned to Correctional Facility No. 12, where he will continue serving his sentence under normal conditions," the statement said.
Mikheil Saakashvili is a Georgian and Ukrainian politician and former president of Georgia. He was forced to leave Georgia after the new authorities began persecuting him. He lived and worked in Ukraine for a long time, even obtaining Ukrainian citizenship.
In 2021, Saakashvili returned to Georgia, where he was arrested because he had previously been convicted in absentia. In March 2025, a Georgian court, controlled by the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party, sentenced the former president to an additional 4.5 years in prison.
At the same time, in March 2025, pro-Russian politicians from Georgian Dream threatened to "declare unconstitutional" the United National Movement party founded by Saakashvili.
