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Putin’s ‘Personal Prisoner’ Issues Ominous Warning to Trump

The Russian leader once vowed to hang him “by the balls.” But Mikheil Saakashvili says the day of Putin’s own violent end is growing nearer.

Vladimir Putin has been thinking of ways to take revenge on his enemies for decades, but there was only one man who the Russian leader promised “to hang.”

Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and leader of the first color revolution in the post-Soviet space, shocked Putin during the first term of his 26-year rule, back in 2003.

The revolution ousted the Moscow-friendly old guard in Tbilisi, brought a pro-Western government to power, and accelerated Georgia’s integration efforts with Europe and NATO, which the Kremlin saw as a betrayal.

Now behind bars on charges he says were orchestrated by a “Russian agent,” Saakashvili is sending his old friend Donald Trump a wake-up call about cozying up to Russia and its allies in the Caucasus.

The American president’s son, Eric Trump, has announced plans to visit Tbilisi to unveil the latest Trump Tower, a move that has raised eyebrows for the project’s links to Bidzina Ivanishvili, a pro-Kremlin oligarch sanctioned by the U.S.

Saakashvili, who in 2015 received Ukrainian citizenship and automatically lost his citizenship in his native Georgia, has urged Trump to be under no illusions about the Kremlin and what its war in Ukraine means for the rest of the world.

“I wrote several letters to Trump with pleas to help Ukraine. I am happy Trump didn’t abolish the pre-existing sanctions and even introduced some new ones. But certainly, much more is needed,” he told the Daily Beast.

“Being soft on Russia’s regional allies is counterproductive,” he said of Georgia’s current leadership, which has increasingly leaned towards the Kremlin and begun adopting the same laws to persecute LGBT and “foreign agents.”

“You have to make this part clear: if you are helping Putin in any way, you will be punished by the U.S. That also should be true about Georgia, which is actually aiding Russia to bypass sanctions. We are looking to U.S. leadership and any ambivalence has a huge demoralizing effect. America has to regain its moral leadership, for which we all loved it,” he said.

“But going back to Ukraine, I have my 5-year-old daughter Jasmine under bombardment in Kyiv. And I know that her and countless other lives depend upon President Trump sending Patriot missiles to repel Russian attacks,” Saakashvili said.

While Saakashvili has been in prison in his native country for nearly five years now—serving a 12.5-year sentence on embezzlement and abuse of power charges he and his allies say are politically motivated—the Kremlin has still sought to use him as an example for other leaders who defy Moscow.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, promised late last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would suffer the same fate as Saakashvili. Medvedev was Russia’s president in 2008, when Saakashvili’s government ran a nation-wide vote on NATO membership. The relationship between Medvedev and Saakashvili rapidly deteriorated to open military conflict.

“I am not surprised that Medvedev continues to mention me. I was demonstratively pushed behind bars – it was in many ways meant to please Putin. I was tortured and poisoned with heavy metals; it was certified by German and Californian labs,” Saakashvili said, describing himself as “Putin’s personal prisoner.”

In December 2022, Saakashvili’s medical records showed “traces of mercury and arsenic” found in his hair and nails, his legal team said.

In June, the European Parliament demanded the immediate release of Saakashvili on humanitarian grounds, so that he could seek medial treatment. But even Saakashvili’s supporters agree that for as long as Putin has influence on the current Georgian government, Saakashvili will remain in jail.

“Putin personally wants to see Saakashvili behind bars, using it as a warning for Zelensky, Pashinyan (the president of Armenia) and every leader who disobeys him,” exiled former mayor of Tbilisi, Giorgi Ugulava, told the Daily Beast.

The current Georgian government and the billionaire who is widely regarded as its de facto leader, Ivanishvili, are doing business with both Moscow and Washington.

The alignment with Moscow is in stark contrast to the direction the country took back when Saakashvili was president. By 2007, a few years after Saakashvili became president, the World Bank named Georgia the “world’s number one economic reformer.” Saakashvili won the war against corruption and built one of the most successful civil societies in the world. But his conflict with Moscow escalated to a war in 2008.

In August 2008, Russian tanks rolled on Georgian soil, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy went to Moscow to broker a peace deal for Georgia. Putin told Sarkozy he had plans “to hang by the balls” Saakashvili, Sarkozy later revealed. And it didn’t sound like a joke – Russian tanks were less than 30 miles from the capital.

“Sarkozy told me about the threat and when asked at an annual press conference if he promised to hang me by one place, Putin smirked, ‘Why only by one?” Saakashvili told the Daily Beast.

Saakashvili was a long-time friend and supporter of Donald Trump; the two used to discuss big real estate plans on the Black Sea.

“When I was the president, Donald Trump highly praised my reforms; when I was in New York, he used to invite me to watch Broadway musicals together. … Now, Russian propaganda says America used Saakashvili and abandoned him,” Saakashvili told The Daily Beast, adding that he had never requested to be on the U.S. swap list.

Saakashvili took note of Trump’s envoy, John Coale, visiting Minsk earlier this week, where he announced the release of 25 Belarusian political prisoners in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions on two Belarusian business companies.

“In one of my letters I praised him for freeing political prisoners in Belarus and asked to apply the same approach in Georgia, where the U.S. has all the leverage to achieve our freedom,” he said.

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But so far, his call has not been answered.

In late August, when the world heard the news of the notorious “Butcher of Bosnia” Ratko Mladic dying in prison, Saakashvili recalled Mladic’s conviction in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for “genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

He thought of Putin, he said, and the inevitable outcome for the Russian leader: “I don’t see any scenario where Putin doesn’t end very badly. He either finishes like Ratko Mladic or will be hanged by those around him.”

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Anna Nemtsova

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