Border guards block former Georgia president

POLAND/UKRAINE: Attempts to enter Ukraine by Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia who became governor of a Ukrainian region, descended into a tense standoff yesterday as Ukrainian authorities fought to keep him out of the country.

Saakashvili, who rose to prominence as the defiant Georgian leader during his country’s 2008 war with Russia, had been trying to get into Ukraine from Poland to contest the annulment of his Ukrainian citizenship by Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president - an act that had left him stateless.

He had earlier lost his Georgian citizenship when he became Ukrainian.

Saakashvili first tried to get into his adopted country by taking a train to Kiev from the eastern Polish town of Przemsyl.

This failed when he and other passengers were stranded at the station after the train’s crew refused to start the journey unless someone ‘‘who has no legal grounds to enter Ukraine’’ disembarked.

After more than two hours on the stationary train, Saakashvili travelled by bus to a border crossing only to find his path blocked by armed Ukrainian troops.

‘‘The Ukrainian authorities are behaving like savages who are hoping that I won’t be able to get into Ukraine and so will have to stay in Poland instead, but I’m not going to let that happen,’’ said Saakashvili.

He added that he would complain to Polish police about the train.

Although it was unclear who ordered the train to remain in Poland, suspicion has fallen on Poroshenko.

Once friends, Poroshenko had invited Saakashvili to Ukraine to help clean up the country’s notoriously corrupt state infrastructure.

But their relationship soured after claims by Saakashvili that the Ukrainian president was doing too little to fight corruption and that powerful vested interests were blocking his attempts to fight the scourge.

Poroshenko rescinded Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship in July for apparently failing to declare he under a criminal investigation in Georgia when applying for Ukrainian citizenship.

In Georgia, Saakashvili is wanted for alleged crimes relating to a crackdown on a peaceful demonstration and a raid on a private television station in 2007. Saakashvili has denied all charges.

‘‘We will appeal, if I’m stopped at the border, and will stay there as long as it takes,’’ Saakashvili said before heading for the border.

‘‘We’ll have tents. I know that some people have stayed in airports for years but I don’t know about a land border.

‘‘I have a legal right to stay in Ukraine,’’ he continued.

‘‘I don’t want to stay anywhere else. I want to go back.’’

- Telegraph Group