Image by Elke Wetzig
After Tsarizm broke the news last week that Mikhail Saakashvili was soon to be deported from Ukraine, media outlets began to report the news early this week. “Poroshenko wants to extradite me,” Saakashvili said in a statement broadcast on the NewsOne television outlet on October 24. “I ask Kyiv residents and all other honest people for protection,” reported RFEFL.
Government Source: Saakashvili On Path To Be Arrested And Deported
General Yuriy Lutsenko announced that the country’s migration service had rejected Saakashvili’s application for refugee status. “As a result, he is now a stateless person and there are no special obstacles excluding him from deportation or extradition,” Lutsenko said, wrote RFEFL.
For his part, Saakashvili plans to sue the Migration Service for his loss of citizenship. “We will file an appeal against this miserable paper. It is unclear what they will say, because not a single law has been implemented so we are filing a lawsuit against them before they say it is too late to do that, we are filing a lawsuit against the Migration Service,” Saakashvili told the NewsOne TV channel, wrote Russian state news agency TASS.
Saakashvili, Says Ukraine Will Break Up If Corruption Is Not Reversed
After announcing yesterday that Saakashvili’s request for refugee status in the country had been rejected, Saakashvili also called for a new rally outside the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. “I knew that it [his depotation – TASS] is possible, but, on the other hand, I returned [to Ukraine], because the people and Ukraine must be protected from the wheeler-dealers in power. That’s why we will gather tomorrow at 7 p.m.,” Saakashvili announced on Tuesday evening in a NewsOne TV channel broadcast, reported TASS.
The protesters demand to strip Rada deputies of their parliamentary immunity, amend the election laws, and set up an anticorruption tribunal.
Saakashvili said that if those bills are passed, the protestors will withdraw from Kiev’s governmental district.
“People are waiting for November 7. The president has made his promise, the parliament has made its promise. If they fulfill them, people will leave.”
The Ukrainian government has been hesitant to arrest the former governor of Odessa, and former president of Georgia, for fear of increasing his political stature, and fear of another ‘color revolution’ which ousted Russian-backed President Yanykovych in 2014. Saakashvili is wanted for corruption in Georgia. Ukraine has not declared whether or not he will be extradited.
