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Former Georgian president Saakashvili is detained in Ukraine Clashes in Kiev as ex-Georgian president Saakashvili detained by masked agents
(35 minutes later)
Ukraine has detained the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili on suspicion of assisting a criminal organisation, the SBU state security service has said, an offence that could land him in prison for up to five years. Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, was arrested in Ukraine’s capital Kiev on Tuesday morning after a confrontation during which he threatened to jump off the roof of his apartment building.
Masked officers dragged Saakashvili from an apartment in the capital, Kiev, while his supporters protested on the street and tried to stop the police van from leaving. Officers from the SBU security services entered Saakashvili’s flat in central Kiev early in the morning, after which he fled to the roof and gave an impassioned speech to supporters gathered below.
It is the latest twist in a prolonged feud between Ukrainian authorities and Saakashvili, who was invited to become a regional governor after protests in 2014 ousted a pro-Russian president but quickly fell out with the president, his one-time ally Petro Poroshenko. After he was dragged from the rooftop by masked security forces agents, there was a stand-off in central Kiev, as supporters of Saakashvili moved to block the van carrying the politician from leaving the scene. There were clashes and teargas was used as protesters blocked the road for more than an hour.
Addressing supporters earlier from the roof of the house, Saakashvili had accused Poroshenko of being a traitor and a thief. He tried to address the crowd again as he was being bundled into a blue minivan, which was then surrounded by protesters. It remains unclear exactly what charges, if any, Saakashvili faces. Lawyers close to the politician suggested he may be charged either with supporting criminal groups, or with plotting a coup. There were also suggestions he could be deported to Georgia, where he faces criminal charges he has dismissed as politically motivated. Ukraine’s general prosecutor said on Tuesday afternoon that Saakashvili’s activities in Ukraine were funded by an ally of deposed president Viktor Yanukovych.
“What they are doing is lawlessness in the eyes of the whole world,” Saakashvili said. “I urge all Ukrainians to take to the streets and drive out the thieves.” Tuesday morning’s arrest was a new chapter in the bizarre and incongruous recent biography of a man who was once considered the reformist hope of the post-Soviet region. It is also the latest episode in an increasingly bitter feud between the former Georgian leader and the current Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko.
Saakashvili made a dramatic return to Ukraine in September, barging his way across the border from Poland despite having been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship and facing the threat of possible extradition to Georgia. Poroshenko tapped Saakashvili, whom he had known since student days, to run the southern region of Odessa in 2015, in the hope that the Georgian’s energetic reformist tendencies would transform the area. However, at the end of 2016, Saakashvili resigned, blaming Poroshenko for the slow pace of reform and promising to go into opposition and create his own party.
He wants to unseat Poroshenko and replace him with a new, younger politician. Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, granted so he could take up the Odessa job, while on a trip outside the country earlier this year, but forced his way across the border with the help of supporters. On Tuesday, Saakashvili shouted from the roof that Poroshenko is “a criminal, thief and traitor”.
Saakashvili was appointed governor of the Odessa region in 2015 on the strength of the reforms he carried out in Georgia. He quit in 2016 after falling out with Poroshenko, accusing him of corruption, while Poroshenko’s office said Saakashvili was trying to deflect from his own shortcomings as an administrator. Saakashvili came to power in Georgia in the Rose Revolution of 2003, and introduced sweeping reforms that helped reduce corruption and red tape in the post-Soviet nation. However, his rule became marred by allegations of creeping authoritarianism. In 2008, the Georgian Army was routed by Russia and when Saakashvili left office in 2013 he was widely unpopular.
Saakashvili divides opinion. Supporters see him as a fearless crusader against corruption but critics say there is little substance behind his blustery rhetoric. Poroshenko gave Saakashvili a second political life with the Odessa appointment. His time in office was never boring, with televised publicity stunts, late-night meetings and increasingly strident criticism of Poroshenko’s government. During one cabinet meeting in Kiev, Saakashvili got into a shouting match with interior minister, Arsen Avakov, accusing him of corruption and saying he would go to jail. In response, Avakov threw a glass of water in Saakashvili’s face and called him a “bonkers populist”.
In Georgia, where he took power after a peaceful pro-western uprising, known as the Rose Revolution, in 2003, his time in office was tarnished by what critics said was his monopoly on power and pressure on the judiciary. Poroshenko’s supporters say the Ukrainian president is attempting important reform while dealing with a difficult political legacy of ingrained corruption and a punishing war in the east of the country, where the Ukrainian army is fighting separatists funded and backed by Russia.
He was president at the time of a disastrous five-day war with Russia in 2008, a conflict that his critics argued was the result of his own miscalculations. Critics, including Saakashvili, have accused Poroshenko of governing in the same manner as previous Ukrainian presidents, giving preferential treatment to oligarchic allies and failing to reform fast enough. International backers of Ukraine have grown impatient at the speed of reform in the country.
The 49-year-old is wanted on criminal charges in Georgia, which he says were fabricated for political reasons. The extraordinary footage of masked special agents manhandling Saakashvili is unlikely to burnish Poroshenko’s reform credentials, though the Georgian also has a mixed reputation in the international community, with many wary of his impulsive style.