By Burc Eruygur
ISTANBUL (AA) — A top Russian lawmaker claimed on Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would share the fate of his jailed former Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili.
"From the very beginning of his reign, Saakashvili's regime was emphatically Russophobic. He was supported by the EU and NATO financed, supplied (him) with weapons, and trained the military," Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the Russian State Duma, said in a statement on Telegram.
Claiming that the same could later be said of Ukraine, Volodin asserted Saakashvili turned out to be "unnecessary" to the West and that "history repeats itself, but now with Zelenskyy."
"The West is already tired of him and the insatiable Kyiv regime. His ingratitude became the dominant feature of European politics. This is openly declared at the official level in Britain and even in Poland.
"The fate of the puppets of Washington and Brussels always ends the same way — they get rid of them. Zelenskyy is next," added the speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament.
Serving as Georgia's president between 2004 and 2013, Saakashvili's Georgian citizenship was revoked in 2015 after he became a citizen of Ukraine, where he also served as governor of southwestern Odesa Oblast.
His medical team says his health has deteriorated significantly since he was imprisoned in October 2021 following his arrest after secretly returning to Georgia from eight years in exile. He went on hunger strike several times to protest his imprisonment.
A Georgian court sentenced Saakashvili to six years in prison for two separate cases of abuse of power as head of state.
The former Georgian president is still on trial in three separate cases and has attended hearings via videoconference due to his failing health.