Georgia’s ex-president and opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili on Thursday, March 10, called off his second announced hunger strike since being jailed last year, citing the conflict in Ukraine. “I am ending my hunger strike on its 20th day,” he wrote on Facebook. “We now need full possession of our faculties, health, focus, and strength.”
The 54-year-old pro-Western reformer said his decision followed an appeal from Georgians fighting Russian troops in Ukraine and from “representatives of Ukraine’s high military command with whom I am in constant contact”. Saakashvili, who became a Ukraine national in 2017, was active in Ukrainian politics after moving there when his second and last term as president ended in 2013.
In 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Saakashvili his senior advisor on reforms. He previously served as governor of Ukraine’s strategic Odessa Region.
“The Russian empire is being played out near my beloved Kyiv as heroic Ukrainians and their commander-in-chief Volodymyr Zelensky are winning this epochal war,” Saakashvili wrote in his Facebook post. “In this situation we all need unity and preparedness for the moment of truth.”
In 2008, Saakashvili confronted Russia’s invasion of his Black Sea nation of some four million people. After the 2008 war, Russia recognised two separatist regions in Georgia as independent states and stationed military bases there. Some Georgians compare Saakashvili to Zelensky as both refused Western proposals evacuate them in the face of Russian attacks.
Saakashvili was jailed in October last year after he secretly returned to Tbilisi from exile in Ukraine. He denounced his jailing for alleged abuse of office as politically motivated and previously spent 50 days on hunger strike, sparking concerns for his health. Amnesty International branded his treatment “not just selective justice but apparent political revenge”.
