PM Morawiecki: Polish doctors are examining Georgia's former president Saakashvili

Saakashvili, 55, was sent to prison in 2021 for six years on charges of abusing his power while president of the ex-Soviet state, a charge he says was politically motivated. His health deteriorated in prison, where he has staged repeated hunger strikes and alleges he was poisoned.

"We do not leave friends in need," Morawiecki wrote on Twitter. "At my request, a team of Polish doctors... started a comprehensive medical examination of President Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia.

Warsaw had previously proposed to the Georgian government that Saakashvili be treated in Poland.

Saakashvili himself has asked to be transferred abroad for treatment. In a video shot during a court hearing last week, an emaciated Saakashvili lifted his shirt to show protruding ribs.

In a video message published in early July, Zelenskiy urged Georgian authorities to allow Mikheil Saakashvili, who holds Ukrainian citizenship, to come to Kyiv for medical treatment.

"The world once again has witnessed how the Kremlin, sadly at the hands of the Georgian government, is killing Mikheil Saakashvili," Zelenskiy said at the time.

"Ukraine has repeatedly called on the Georgian authorities to stop this public execution," he added. "No authority in Europe has the right to execute people. Life is a fundamental European value."

In a handwriteen letter sent to Ukrainska Pravda, Saakashvili said Ukraine was essential part of his life and fight. "I spent most of my conscious life in Ukraine. I speak Ukrainian now already better than Russian. Ukraine is my house in Kyiv, small land plot in Myrhorod. Ukraine is my special love – the city of Odesa. Ukraine is huge number of my friends and lately Ukraine is my small Ukrainian daughter Jasmine whom I had no chance to see and hold in my hands yet," he added.

"For me survival and success of Georgia was always unimaginable without Ukraine, now it also extends to the survival of European continent and to my own survival and rescue from Putin’s oligarchic prison," Saakashvili wrote.