Ukrainian President Has “No Political Plans” for Saakashvili
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has stated that he has “no political plans” for ex-president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili. The comments come after Zelensky restored Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship on 28 May.
Speaking with Current Time TV, the newly elected President said he has simple plans for Saakashvili, not political, insisting that he only returned Saakashvili’s citizenship as he believed that it had been illegally canceled.
Although Zelensky insists Saakshvili’s return is not political, Saakashvili stated that he came back to Ukraine “to help Zelensky fulfill his election promises.”
“I have not come to Ukraine for revenge or destruction: I came here to build,” Saakashvili told the media upon arriving in Ukraine on May 29.
Georgian academic Elizbar Javelidze questions the political authority of Zelensky, accusing him of being a puppet of Komoliski, a Ukrainian billionaire with a large influence in Ukrainian politics and media.
“Saakashvili’s citizenship was not restored by President Zelensky, but by his boss, billionaire Kolomiski,” he said in an interview with Asaval Dasavali newspaper. “Saakashvili was allowed into Ukraine as a political prostitute of Kolomiski.”
Since returning to Ukraine just two days after receiving his citizenship, Saakashvili has immediately involved himself in politics, setting his eyes on the parliamentary elections in Ukraine to take place on 21 July.
Saakashvili stated that his Ukrainian political party The Movement of New Forces would not be running in the parliamentary elections in Ukraine on 21 July. The Mayor of Kiev, Vitaliy Klitschko, then invited Saakashvili to become Chairman of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), therefore enabling Saakashvili to participate in the elections.
“If I accept the offer, we will have to completely change the UDAR party as there are many people who were loyal to Petro Poroshenko [former Ukrainian President] and several others who are involved in corruption,” said Saakashvili.
Speaking in a video address on 4 June, Klitschko proposed “joining hands for quick and effective changes.”
“Today, I saw an appeal by Saakashvili, whose political force’s participation in the elections has been blocked,” he said. “Therefore, I am ready to lend my political shoulder. I am convinced that our alliance will double efforts to change the country.”
Saakashvili, who served as the President of Georgia from 2004 to 2007 and 2008 to 2013, reinvented himself as a Ukrainian politician following criminal charges against him in Georgia.
In Georgia, he is accused of violently dispersing anti-government protests on 7 November 2007, carrying out an illegal raid on Imedi television, and unlawfully acquiring property owned by the media tycoon Badri Patarkatishvili. In 2018, he was sentenced in absentia for abuse of power.
Despite these accusations, Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship in 2015 by Petro Poroshenko, the President at the time. He was then appointed the regional governor of Odessa, the Ukrainian region on the Black Sea.
However, after resigning from his position in 2016, Saakashvili fell out with Poroshenko, causing him to lose his Ukrainian citizenship in 2017. He then illegally crossed back into Ukraine, where he held protests in Kiev against Poroshenko until his deportation at the beginning of 2018.
By Amy Jones
Image source - Kyiv Post