Emmanuel Macron asked the Georgian President, Salomé Zourabichvili (here, in February 2022 at the Élysée), to pardon Mikhaïl Saakashvili. LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP
DECRYPTION – Beyond the fate of the former reformist president and former darling of Westerners, it is the future of the small Georgian republic that is in question.
This force of nature, which weighed more than 100 kg and whose extraordinary energy had extricated Georgia, a small Caucasian country of 4 million inhabitants, from the Russian sphere to bring it closer to the West, is now only shadow of himself. The colossus weighs only 64 kg. Poisoned, he says, by pro-Russian agents in his Tbilisi prison where power threw him, former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is slowly dying. “He now weighs only 64 kg. He has trouble speaking. He can hardly stand up anymore. Its temperature rarely drops below 38 degrees. He has no energy, vomits regularly and spends his days watching television. summarizes Giorgi Chaladze, a relative who visits him regularly.
Its history is one of the most romantic in the region. Came to power after participating in the Rose Revolution in 2004, which forced former Georgian President Edouard Shevardnadze to resign, the one everyone nicknamed “Micha”…
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