On 24 April, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia expressed his dissatisfaction at a government meeting with the possibility of Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s appointment as the deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, reported urdupoint. 

“It is absolutely unacceptable to us that our strategic partner appoints [a a person who has been convicted for serious crimes and is wanted] as a deputy prime minister... Georgia will definitely respond to this ... We have not recalled our ambassador but if this decision is taken, we will recall the ambassador, at the very least, for consultations,” he said. 

On 22 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered Saakashvili the seat of deputy prime minister in charge of reforms in the country. “Together with the President’s team, I am ready to work with all patriotic forces in the Ukrainian Parliament and other political forces to enable Ukraine to overcome today’s global economic crisis with the least loss and to deal with all challenges. I also hope that I will use my international experience to be the government's useful member, including in terms of communicating with international financial organizations to strengthen Ukraine's prestige and its integration into the international community, in order to primarily protect the Ukrainian national interests and contribute to the progress in the country,’ Saakashvili wrote after the offer was made official.

Saakashvili’s appointment  “could bring a chill in relations between Ukraine and Georgia, where Saakashvili remains the ruling party’s go-to bogeyman” as “Saakashvili himself is effectively campaigning in both countries” and “regularly vows to bring down the billionaire chief of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili,” as the Georgian journalist Giorgi Lomsadze wrote. 

In 2013, Saakashvili left Georgia after the Georgian Dream's candidate Giorgi Margvelashvili was appointed as the county’s new President. In 2015, the former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili as Governor of Odessa Oblast and he was also granted Ukrainian citizenship, and due to restrictions on dual nationality under Georgian law, was stripped of his Georgian citizenship. In 2016, Saakashvili resigned as Governor while blaming President Poroshenko personally for enabling corruption in Odessa and in Ukraine overall. In 2017, Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by Petro Poroshenko, and became a stateless person. On 29 May 2019, he returned to Ukraine after Zelensky restored his citizenship.