Ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvivi said on Sept. 2 that representatives of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry detained his brother David Saakashvili as he was leaving his house this morning.
David Sakvarelidze was subsequently released. The State Migration Service said that, unless he leaves Ukraine, he would be deported after a court order.
Saakashvili, who was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship on July 26, said that the arrest was an example of pressure from the Ukrainian authorities.
“He was a lawyer and had a residence permit in Ukraine,” Saakashvili wrote about his brother. “You (the authorities) don’t know me at all, now I’m even more committed to help Ukrainians get rid of crooks.”
Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian passport two years after President Petro Poroshenko granted him citizenship. The former Odesa Oblast governor’s brother has kept a low profile in Ukraine. Back in Georgia, he ran the High School of Justice in Tbilisi for 12 years before departing in 2012.
Artem Shevchenko, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry spokesman, confirmed to the Kyiv Post that David Saakashvili was detained and said that his residence permit was canceled in March when the State Employment Service canceled his work permit. According to Shevchenko, Saakashvili’s brother was informed of that occurrence.
His deportation is yet to be decided, Shevchenko added.
The news of David Saakashvili’s detention followed Saakashvili’s announcement that he plans to return to Ukraine. Saakashvili, who was rendered stateless after President Petro Poroshenko stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship in July, said on Aug. 16 that he will come back to Ukraine on Sept. 10 through the Krakovets checkpoint in Lviv Oblast on the Polish border.
He said he was going to enter Ukraine openly without violating any laws, not secretly, and said that it was Poroshenko who had “violated the Constitution, as well as Ukrainian and international law.” Saakashvili added that he would seek to protect his rights in a Ukrainian court.
The Kharkiv Human Rights Group believes Poroshenko’s decree to strip Saakashvili of citizenship violates a constitutional ban on the cancellation of citizenship. Poroshenko’s supporters argue that it is in line with the Constitution.
Lawyer Vitaly Tytych said that only a conviction of a severe crime could be grounds for stripping someone of Ukrainian citizenship, and Saakashvili has not been convicted of any crimes. Lawyers also say Poroshenko’s refusal to publish the decree is illegal, which Poroshenko denies.
Poroshenko’s move has been seen as an attempt to politically sideline a rival ahead of the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections. The president’s spokesperson cited supposedly incorrect information on his 2015 citizenship application as the official reason for Saakashvili’s loss of citizenship.
Illya Kiva, an ex-adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and the former head of the counter-narcotics department at the ministry, told 112 TV Channel that David Saakashvili was detained for violating the terms of his stay in Ukraine and will be deported to Georgia.
Kiva told the strana.ua news site on Aug. 30 that he would shoot Saakashvili supporters who would come to meet him on the border on Sept. 10. He confirmed his intentions in a Sept. 1 interview with ZIK television.
“I’ll shoot all these a***holes who will be involved in the illegal crossing of the border the same way we do it in the war zone in the east – including (Batkyvshchyna party leader) Yulia Tymoshenko, (lawmaker) Sergii Leshchenko, (lawmaker) Semen Semenchenko, (lawmaker) Volodymyr Parasyuk, (NewsOne’s owner) Yevgeny Murayev, who has agreed to broadcast Saakashvili on NewsOne, and other Russian agents,” he said.
Saakashvili and his ally David Sakvarelidze also said that Ukrainian authorities were reinforcing Ukraine’s border with Poland in the run-up to Saakashvili’s arrival and posted pictures of barbed wire being installed on the border and military vehicles deployed there. Sakvarelidze said that Maryna Pochtar, a spokeswoman for Saakashvili’s party, the Movement of New Forces, had been detained while taking pictures of the reinforcements.
Poroshenko on Aug. 30 signed a decree to strengthen control over foreigners and stateless persons entering Ukraine in what his critics saw as preparation for Saakashvili’s arrival.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Oleksiy Takhtai, a member of the Citizenship Commission who voted for stripping Saakashvili of citizenship in July, negotiated a corrupt deal in a video with a person who has already been convicted for the deal. The video footage has been recorded by the Security Service of Ukraine and has been recognized by courts as genuine.
