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Saakashvili’s Ukrainian border breach sparks row as president slams ex-governor

Monday, 11 September 2017 4:06 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 11 September 2017 4:48 PM ]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko delivers a speech during an annual address to lawmakers at the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev on September 7, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The Ukrainian president has lambasted former Georgian leader and Ukrainian governor Mikheil Saakashvili for illegally crossing into Ukraine to reclaim his citizenship.

Petro Poroshenko said Monday that Saakashvili could have reclaimed his citizenship in a court but his forced return to Ukraine a day earlier from the border with Poland was a clear violation of Ukrainian law by a former senior official.

“But instead, he committed a crime — because the state border must not be violated,” said Poroshenko, who decided in July to strip Saakashvili of his citizenship after the two fell out over Ukraine’s way of fighting corruption. Saakashvili had accused Poroshenko of blocking efforts to stop corruption.

Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili (C) and his supporters, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko (L), walk through the Ukrainian border at Shegyni checkpoint on September 10, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Saakashvili, who shoved his way through a line of Ukrainian border guards on Sunday while accompanied by a group of supporters, said it was Poroshenko who had committed a crime by revoking his citizenship.

The pro-Western politician, who resigned as governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region in November 2016 after 18 months, said he would fight for his citizenship right.

“I want to say that this is the beginning of my fight. I returned home, to Ukraine, in order -- first -- to go to court and defend my rights," he told reporters in the western city of Leviv on Monday, vowing to reclaim his citizenship and return to politics.

Saakashvili was Georgia’s president from 2004 to 2013. He gave up his Georgian citizenship after he became Odessa’s governor in Ukraine.

The outspoken politician is now stateless and there is a risk that Ukraine may extradite him to Georgia to face accusations of abuse of power and misappropriation of property during his time in office in the former Soviet country.

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