Ukraine vows to punish maverick politician for barging across border
Former Georgian president and hundreds of his followers pushed past guards at the Polish border
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko yesterday vowed to punish those responsible for former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili forcing his way back into Ukraine.
Mr Saakashvili, also a former regional governor in Ukraine, made a defiant return on Sunday. He and hundreds of his supporters barged their way past guards at a border crossing with Poland.
“A crime has been committed,” Mr Poroshenko said yesterday. “There should be an absolutely unequivocal legal, judicial responsibility.”
He stripped Mr Saakashvili of Ukrainian citizenship while he was out of the country in July, after the former Georgia leader said Kiev was neglecting the fight against corruption.
That move left the pro-western politician stateless as he had already been stripped of citizenship in his homeland of Georgia.
In the western city of Lviv, Mr Saakashvili said he was determined to reclaim his Ukrainian citizenship and return to politics.
“This is the beginning of my fight. I returned home to Ukraine to go to court and defend my rights,” he said.
The stand-off is yet another headache for Mr Poroshenko, who is battling a Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine and trying to revive a struggling economy.
Prime minister Volodymyr Groysman said those behind Mr Saakashvili’s return should be held responsible, while Arsen Avakov, minister of the interior, called the border breach “an attack on the state’s basic institutions”.
Some analysts have accused Mr Saakashvili of seeking to unseat the president.
“Saakashvili’s return to Ukrainian politics was triumphant, albeit scandalous,” said Vadym Karasyov, director of the Institute of Global Strategies in Kiev.
Mr Saakashvili was accompanied by former Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who critics say is hoping to ride his coat-tails back to power.
Supporters overpowered the border guards in scenes that politician Svitlana Zalishchuk called a circus.
Ukrainian authorities had blocked a Kiev-bound train carrying Mr Saakashvili on Sunday. But he got off the train and took a bus to Medyka, where he walked across the border.
The interior ministry said 11 police and five border guards were injured in clashes with Mr Saakashvili’s supporters. Some commentators in Ukraine decried the stand-off, saying it further tarnished the nation’s image abroad. “Yesterday and today millions of Ukrainian nationals are feeling ashamed of their authorities, of the opposition and themselves,” wrote political observer Yevhen Kuzmenko.
Mr Saakashvili, 49, is credited with pro-western reforms in Georgia, where he led from 2004 to 2013.
After the revolution in Kiev, he moved to Ukraine in 2015 to work as governor of the Odessa region on the Black Sea.
Georgian authorities have asked Kiev to extradite Mr Saakashvili, saying he is a defendant in four criminal cases. He has denied the accusations.