Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is suing popular Ukrainian TV news host Tetyana Danylenko because of comments made on her show in May by former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
News outlet Hromadske on Sept. 18 reported the Kyiv Dniprovskiy District Court had adjourned a hearing of its Avakov versus Saakashvili defamation case, as one of the defendants – identified as journalist Tetyana Danylenko – had failed to appear in the courtroom.
Danylenko, currently the host of the Face to Face political talk show on Ukraine’s ZIK news channel, said she had not received a subpoena for the proceedings initiated by Avakov.
“I’m shocked, to put it lightly,” the journalist wrote on her Facebook page on Sept. 18.
“As far as I understand, during my show, Mikheil Saakashvili claimed that a number of Ukrainian officials, particularly the Interior Ministry’s head, possess foreign passports. Saakashvili is somehow a third party in the case, while I am the defendant.”
Saakashvili Avakov have been at loggerheads since December 2015, when, during a National Reforms Council meeting, Avakov had a heated exchange with then Odesa governor. The row ended with Avakov throwing a glass of water at his opponent and telling him to “get the hell out” of “his country.”
Denys Horbas, the director of the Interior Ministry’s legal department, told Hromadske that Avakov’s court case aims to refute Saakashvili’s allegations that the minister secretly holds double citizenship, which is against the law in Ukraine.
The Kyiv court delayed its hearings of the case until Sept. 21, the Hromadske said.
As reported previously, on July 27, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship for allegedly giving incorrect information in his application for a passport. The former Georgian president, who was in the United States at the time, was effectively made a stateless person.
Nevertheless, Saakashvili in August flew to Poland, and later travelled to several other countries, including Hungary, Lithuania and Demark, before announcing that on Sept. 10 he would return to Ukraine.
On Sept. 10, Saakashvili, accompanied by political allies, including opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko and hundreds of supporters, broke through a cordon of border guards and crossed into Ukraine from Poland at the Shegyni checkpoint in Lviv Oblast.
