LVIV, Ukraine – Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, currently in Lviv, said on Sept. 12 that he would visit Ukraine’s biggest cities starting from Sept. 13 and would subsequently come to Kyiv.
Saakashvili said he would visit all major Ukrainian cities, including Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Lutsk, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipro.
“I will go to Kyiv after I visit several big Ukrainian cities,” Saakashvili said. “I will speak to people and collect their demands, including those on returning property stolen by oligarchs. Then I will come to Kyiv with these people and give these demands to Ukrainian authorities… We will create tools for legally replacing this government.”
He said the issue of whether to push for early presidential elections would be decided during his tour around Ukraine.
Saakashvili and his supporters broke through the border with Poland and entered Ukraine on Sept. 10.
Saakashvili’s breaking into the country followed repeated attempts by the authorities to deny him entry, first citing allegedly invalid documents, and then a bomb threat at a border checkpoint.
Border guards came to Lviv’s Leopolis hotel, where Saakashvili is staying, early on Sept. 12 to hand him charges concerning an administrative offense – illegal crossing of the border. Such an offense is punishable with a fine or detention of up to 15 days.
A court in the town of Mostyska in Lviv Oblast is set to consider the alleged administrative offense on Sept. 18.
Saakashvili denied committing an administrative offense, and argued that the authorities’ claim that it could have been a criminal offense was false. The Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal case into his crossing of the border.
In a scene of disorder on the border, Saakashvili’s supporters on Sept.10 broke through a cordon of border guards, and manhandled the former Georgian president across the border into Ukraine from Poland.
“Yesterday the president of Ukraine and Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman officially stated that this was a crime,” Saakashvili said. “The president and Groysman lied. According to the Administrative Code, it is not a crime.”
Saakashvili said that he had legally passed through the Polish checkpoint and was on Ukrainian territory when he was carried by his supporters through the Ukrainian checkpoint, and that is why his arrival in Ukraine cannot be considered an “illegal breakthrough” of the border.
Saakashvili’s lawyer Markiyan Halabala and Olga Halabala, a leader of his Movement of New Forces party, argued at a news conference on Sept. 12 that the crossing of the border “in cases of extreme necessity” without passing through border controls was legal under Ukrainian law.
Saakashvili’s supporters had been forced to evacuate him because of an alleged bomb threat, given that he could neither return to Poland nor was allowed to enter Ukraine, Markiyan Halabala and Olga Halabala added.
Moreover, the State Border Service violated the 3-hour deadline for filing the administrative offense report, Markiyan Halabala said.
On top of that, Saakashvili is in Ukraine legally because he has applied for asylum, and those applying for asylum are exempt from administrative penalties for crossing the border, Halabala said.
Saakashvili and his ally Yury Derevyanko also said that the authorities were struggling to find a politically loyal judge in Lviv Oblast who would be willing to take the Saakashvili case. So far, the attempts have been unsuccessful, with some judges taking vacations or sick leaves, Derevyanko said.
Meanwhile, Artem Shevchenko, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, claimed that Saakashvili is in Ukraine illegally but there are no grounds to detain him so far. No notices of suspicion have been filed for him in criminal cases, he added.
The Interior Ministry said that it had identified 32 people who took part in Saakashvili’s crossing of the border and detained five of them. They are accused of illegally transporting people through the border, resisting law enforcement officers, using violence against law enforcement officers, and disturbing the peace, the ministry said.
Some lawyers argued that the article on illegally transporting people through the border is inapplicable in this case because it is only applied to human trafficking.
Saakashvili and his supporters interpreted the arrests as political repression.
Another standoff between Saakashvili’s supporters and the authorities took place on Sept. 12 in the town of Vynnyky in Lviv Oblast, where the police blocked and searched fighters of the Donbas volunteer battalion who came to protect Saakashvili.
Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said on Sept. 12 that his ministry had started to consider Georgia’s recent extradition request for Saakashvili. The request concerns four criminal cases into alleged embezzlement, abuse of power and abuse of power with the use of force.
In 2015 Ukraine rejected two previous extradition requests from Georgia for Saakashvili, arguing that the moves had been politically motivated.
Saakashvili, who was stripped by President Petro Poroshenko of his Ukrainian citizenship in July and became stateless while being abroad, believes the cancellation of his citizenship to be illegal and unconstitutional. If Saakashvili is considered a stateless person, he is a permanent resident of Ukraine under the law, and has the right to enter the country without a visa, his lawyers argue.
Under international law and Ukraine’s Administrative Law Code, Saakashvili has the right to dispute his loss of citizenship in court and take part in court hearings over the issue in Ukraine, his lawyers say.
When Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship in July, he argued that the former Georgian president had submitted incorrect information when applying for citizenship in 2015.
Saakashvili says that no proof of this has been provided. Ukrainian authorities have so far refused to give Saakashvili documents on the loss of his citizenship, or specify the legal grounds for its withdrawal.
