Police serve him with notice on breaching border
LVIV – Ukrainian border-control authorities have formally read out a document to Mikheil Saakashvili on what officials said was his illegal entry into Ukraine on September 10.
The ex-Georgian president and former governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region was served the notice on September 12 in front of a group of journalists and lawmakers outside of a hotel in Lviv, with police and border guards on hand.
Ukraine’s state-run Ukrinform news agency reported that Mr. Saakashvili signed the document, acknowledging the allegations of an “administrative violation,” during the meeting outside the Leopolis Hotel in central Lviv, where he has been staying since September 10, when he and supporters broke through a line of Ukrainian border guards to cross from Poland to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry was later quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that Mr. Saakashvili was in the country illegally but authorities were not intent on detaining him at the moment.
Local media said he was ordered to appear at the Mostyskyi District Court of the Lviv region on September 18 for a hearing over the incident.
Police arrived at the hotel on the morning of September 12 and initially blocked access to the building in Lviv, whose mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, has clashed with President Petro Poroshenko in the past.
The State Border Guard Service confirmed the operation was aimed at serving Mr. Saakashvili with the document.
Mr. Saakashvili said in Lviv on September 12 that the document should have been delivered to him earlier.
“If they brought this protocol within three hours when we crossed the border… they could not say that I was hiding somewhere. I was on the main square of Lviv, along with thousands of [people], I would have taken this protocol without question. But what they bring now is a violation of the law,” Mr. Saakashvili said.
He also said he would travel to Kyiv “within days, or weeks” after visiting “towns and villages” across Ukraine.
A day earlier, Mr. Saakashvili said he wanted to unite Ukraine’s opposition against Mr. Poroshenko and that he planned to campaign for support.
President Poroshenko had appointed Mr. Saakashvili to govern Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast in 2015. But Mr. Saakashvili resigned from the post in November 2016 after falling out with Mr. Poroshenko, complaining that his reform efforts were being blocked.
In July, Mr. Poroshenko issued a decree that stripped Mr. Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship.
That left the former Georgian president essentially stateless, because Georgia had stripped him of Georgian citizenship in 2015 when he obtained Ukrainian citizenship in order to take the Odesa post.
On September 11, Ukrainian Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov said Mr. Saakashvili faced “serious” criminal charges for his border breach, which Mr. Avakov described as “an attack on the state’s basic institutions.” Under Ukrainian law, the penalty could be up to five years in prison.
Sixteen security personnel were injured in clashes with Mr. Saakashvili’s supporters during the incident on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Two Saakashvili supporters – Oleksandr Burtsev and Andriy Kotichenko – were detained by police on September 12 for their alleged role in the border violence, according to the Internal Affairs Ministry.
Mr. Saakashvili, who is wanted in Georgia on allegations of corruption and abuse of power, claims to have UNHCR recognition as being “stateless.”
He says he wants to challenge the revocation of his citizenship before a court in Ukraine.
Press conference in Lviv
On September 11, after forcing his way into Ukraine, Mr. Saakashvili said he wants to get involved in Ukrainian politics again and help unite Kyiv’s opposition.
“I want to say that this is the beginning of my fight,” he said at a press conference in Lviv after illegally crossing into Ukraine from Poland.
“I am fighting against rampant corruption, against the fact that oligarchs are in full control of Ukraine again, against the fact that the Maidan has been betrayed,” Ms. Saakashvili said. “We should have democracy in our country and should not have the diktat of the oligarchs.”
He said he would travel to all regions of Ukraine to unite “different political forces around a common theme that we must have a democracy and we should not let oligarchs hold sway.”
He said that he does not want the presidency for himself and wants to promote a new, younger politician to the post, the Reuters news agency reported.
Mr. Saakashvili was joined as he crossed the border by Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and leader of one of Ukraine’s largest opposition parties. She currently is ahead of Mr. Poroshenko in public opinion polls, Reuters reported.
Reuters also reported that reformist lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem, one of the leaders of the Maidan protests and a member of the Poroshenko faction in the Verkhovna Rada, traveled with Mr. Saakashvili and has accused Kyiv authorities of trying to silence opponents.
“We didn’t want this country when we stayed on Maidan,” Reuters quoted Mr. Nayyem as saying. “We wanted a country in which opponents, political opponents, have a right to say what they want.”
Mr. Poroshenko chided Mr. Saakashvili for crossing the border without proper documents. He said Mr. Saakashvili should have contested the decree stripping him of Ukrainian citizenship in court if he disagreed with it.
Mr. Saakashvili said in Lviv that he no longer had a Ukrainian passport, claiming it was “stolen by police” from a bus that had transported him into Ukraine.
“This morning my lawyer delivered to the Ukrainian migration service my application for protection from Ukrainian authorities,” Mr. Saakashvili said. “That means I am legally in Ukraine.”
In a statement, police in Lviv denied that Mr. Saakashvili’s passport had been taken and said his claim “did not correspond to events” at the time of his border crossing.
Earlier, police in Lviv, where Mr. Saakashvili spent the night, said regional police were investigating “events near the [Medyka]-Shehyni checkpoint along the Ukrainian-Polish border.” The statement said those found guilty of illegally crossing the border could face up to five years in prison.
Writing on his Facebook page on September 11, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman called the incident an “attack” on Ukraine’s statehood. “It’s time to fight for the state and not for power,” he said.
With reporting by UNIAN, RFE/RL’s Russian Service, Interfax, AFP, Reuters, TASS and RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Copyright 2017, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington DC 20036; www.rferl.org (see https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-saakashvili-politics-unite-opposition/28730522.html and https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-saakashvili-criminal-probe-border-crossing/28728515.html).