TBILISI, April 17 – Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Facebook that his former personal security officer, Giorgi Kuparashvili, has been appointed commander of a mechanized regiment in Ukraine’s Azov formation.
In his post, Saakashvili identified Kuparashvili as a colonel in Ukraine’s armed forces and said he had been appointed to lead a mechanized regiment in what he described as Ukraine’s famed 3rd Army Corps, formerly known as the Azov Brigade. Saakashvili said Kuparashvili had once served as his personal security officer and later accompanied him to New York after his presidency, before the two went to Ukraine together.
Saakashvili also said Kuparashvili was among the initiators of Azov’s formation alongside Andriy Biletsky and was involved in training troops there. He wrote that Kuparashvili was badly wounded during the siege of Mariupol at Azovstal, was flown out by helicopter to Kyiv, then returned to Azov after recovery and was later promoted.
Kuparashvili previously served as a Georgian military officer, and later became a volunteer fighter in Ukraine. He first served in the Georgian armed forces from 1992, later worked at the special forces base in Kojori, led Georgia’s first international peacekeeping mission within KFOR from 1999, and took part in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. After leaving the Georgian military, he went to Ukraine as a volunteer in 2014, helped form the Azov Battalion, defended Mariupol, founded a sergeants’ school in 2016 and again fought in the defense of Mariupol during Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, where he was seriously wounded in late March that year.
The Azov unit began in May 2014 under the name Azov Battalion, was later incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, and was expanded into a brigade in 2023. As of April 2025, it was part of the newly created 1st Azov Corps. The unit has long drawn controversy over its links to far-right groups and neo-Nazi ideology, as well as the use of controversial symbols and past allegations of human rights abuses.
