TBILISI, July 5. /TASS/. Georgia’s Ambassador to Kiev Georgy Zakarashvili, who was ordered by Ukrainian authorities to leave the country within 48 hours, is leaving Ukraine on Thursday, he said on Wednesday.

"The 48 hours expire tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. I will do my best to try to leave Ukraine tomorrow by 12:00," Zakarashvili said in an interview with the Georgian television channel Rustavi 2.

When touching upon the future of diplomatic relations between the countries, he suggested one possible scenario where the foreign ministries of Georgia and Ukraine could downgrade diplomatic relations, thereby ending up one step closer to severing them completely. The diplomat was hopeful that it would not come to that.

Former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili looked emaciated on Monday when participating via video link in a Tbilisi City Court hearing involving a case about the dispersal of a rally in 2007. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky later instructed the country’s Foreign Ministry to summon Georgian Ambassador to Kiev Georgy Zakarashvili and tell him to leave the country in 48 hours for consultations on the situation regarding Saakashvili, who also holds Ukrainian citizenship. The Georgian Foreign Ministry described Kiev’s decision as an extreme case of strained relations, as well as interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

Four criminal cases were launched against Saakashvili in Georgia after he left the country in 2013. He was sentenced in absentia to three and six years in prison in two of the four cases. In October 2021, Saakashvili secretly arrived in Georgia but was arrested anyway. In May 2022, he was taken to the Vivamed private clinic in Tbilisi, where he has been staying ever since. The Georgian authorities believe that Saakashvili is feigning illness so that he will be released from detention.