Georgia's jailed ex-president says Putin's Russia is not ready for a new 'hot' war

LONDON -- Georgia's Saturday parliamentary elections have been cast by all parties as an era-defining moment for the country's 3.8 million people.

For one of the country's best known men, the results of the election could mean the difference between incarceration and freedom.

Former President Mikheil Saakashvili, 56, has been jailed since 2021 on charges of abuse of power and organizing an assault on an opposition lawmaker -- charges he contends are politically motivated.

"My imprisonment is purely political and everyone knows that," Saakashvili told ABC News in an interview conducted from his prison cell via intermediaries. "Once the politics changes, it will be finished."

Saturday's election will pit the Moscow-leaning Georgian Dream government against several pro-Western opposition parties, among them the United National Movement party founded by Saakashvili in 2001.

Among the UNM's priorities, if it wins power as part of a pro-Western coalition, will be to free Saakashvili.

The campaign has been fraught with allegations of meddling and political violence on behalf of GD. The opposition is hoping to mobilize a historic turnout to defeat what they say are GD efforts to undermine the contest.

"The only recipe for tackling election meddling is erecting the wall of mass turnout at the ballot box," Saakashvili said.

People power has proved a serious problem for GD in recent years. Mass protests defeated the government's first effort to introduce a foreign agents registration law -- which critics say was modeled on Russian legislation used to criminalize Western-leaning politicians, activists and academics -- in 2023.

The government pushed the legislation through again in 2024 despite renewed and intense demonstrations.

Opponents credit GD founder, former prime minister and Georgia's richest man -- Bidzina Ivanishvili -- as the mastermind behind what they say is the government's authoritarian and pro-Moscow pivot, though the billionaire does not hold an official position.

Saakashvili said Ivanishvili -- who made his fortune in Russia after the Soviet collapse -- and the GD party "will go as far as it takes" to retain power this weekend, "but the question will be once they lose the elections if the government structures follow the orders from the oligarch," he added, referring to Ivanishvili.

Ivanishvili and his party are framing the vote as a choice between war and peace. A new Western-led government, they say, will put Tbilisi back on the path to conflict with Russia, reviving the bloodshed of the 2008 war that saw Moscow cement its occupation of 20% of Georgian territory.

"It is straight from the Russian playbook," Saakashvili said of the GD warnings. "Blaming victims for aggression against them. As far as we are concerned, real security and peace is associated with being part of Euro-Atlantic structures, and European Union membership is within reach." Georgia received EU candidate status in 2023.

The latest polls suggest that GD will emerge as the largest party, but will fall significantly short of a parliamentary majority. A grand alliance of pro-EU and pro-NATO opposition parties, though, could get past the 50% threshold to form a new governing coalition.

"Polls are a very treacherous thing in authoritarian systems," Saakashvili said. "Moldova's recent example shows that polls get compromised by mass vote buying, and surely that will be the case in Georgia."

"On the other hand, those that say to pollsters that they are voting for the government very often don't say the truth," he added.

Saakashvili's 2021 imprisonment marked the nadir of a 20-year political rollercoaster. Saakashvili went from the much-loved leader of Georgia's pro-Western Rose Revolution in 2003 to being vanquished by President Vladimir Putin's Russian military machine by 2008.

By 2011, Saakashvili's government was itself accused of violently suppressing protests, with the president soon also embroiled in human rights and corruption scandals.

Constitutionally barred from serving three consecutive terms, Saakashvili left Georgia after the 2013 presidential election and in 2018 was convicted in absentia on abuse of power and other charges.

A Ukrainian citizen -- his citizenship was revoked by President Petro Poroshenko in 2017 before being restored by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019 -- Saakashvili went on to serve as governor of the Odessa region from 2015 to 2016. Zelenskyy appointed Saakashvili as the head of the executive committee of the National Council of Reforms in 2020.

Saakashvili returned to Georgia in October 2021 as the country prepared for local elections. He was arrested and detained by police.

His domestic and international allies have repeatedly condemned his imprisonment, raising concerns of his ill treatment and subsequent ill health. U.S. and European Union officials have also urged Tbilisi to do more to ensure Saakashvili's fair treatment.

He has been hospitalized while in prison -- once due to a hunger strike -- and his gaunt appearance during a 2023 video conference court hearing prompted Zelenskyy to summon the Georgian ambassador in Kyiv to complain.

Saakashvili broadly blames Putin for his current situation. But he believes Moscow is not necessarily in a position to prevent a pro-Western pivot in Tbilisi.

"In 2008, the war happened after the West had sent a clear sign of weakness by refusing the NATO accession for Georgia and Ukraine," Saakashvili said.

"If there is no hesitation this time, Russia is so stuck in Ukraine that it has no motivation to create a new hot war elsewhere."

"We have no other choice," he responded, when asked about the risks of perturbing the Kremlin. "The only other alternative is going back," he said, "living in the Russian sphere of influence."

As to his own plans if indeed he is freed, Saakashvili described himself as "a regional rather than purely Georgian leader."

"I will help any next non-oligarch government with transition by advice," he added, but said he will not seek any official position of power.

"And of course, I am a Ukrainian national and it is my duty to stand by Ukraine."