Saakashvili says will not give up as Ukraine's president strips him of citizenship

Record ID: 904393

  • Title: Saakashvili says will not give up as Ukraine's president strips him of citizenship
  • Date: 27th July 2017
  • Summary: U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE, COLIN POWELL, LISTENING
  • Embargoed: 10th August 2017 10:03
  • Keywords: Ukraine Mikheil Saakashvili Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko citizenship Georgia corruption
  • Location: KIEV AND ODESSA, UKRAINE / UNKNOWN LOCATION / TBILISI, GEORGIA
  • City: KIEV AND ODESSA, UKRAINE / UNKNOWN LOCATION / TBILISI, GEORGIA
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA0076RHT4CN
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Ex-Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili said he would fight Kiev's decision to strip him of his Ukrainian citizenship.
    "I love Ukraine with all my heart and I will continue the fight here, in our Ukraine, despite everything," said Saakashvili in a video posted on Facebook overnight (July 27).
    Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped the one-time ally Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship on Wednesday (July 26) for allegedly providing false information on his citizenship registration form in 2015.
    The migration service did not state the exact reason for Saakashvili's loss of citizenship, though it said he may have acquired citizenship of another country or submitted false documents.
    Saakashvili is currently in the United States and the withdrawal of his Ukrainian citizenship has left him stateless. He lost his Georgian citizenship in 2015 after becoming a Ukrainian national.
    Saakashvili, who is widely credited with cracking down on graft as president of Georgia from 2004 till 2013, was given a Ukrainian passport and appointed governor of Ukraine's southern Odessa region in a surprise move by Poroshenko in May 2015.
    Saakashvili, whose country was attacked by Russian forces in 2008 and who is despised by the Kremlin, has seemed a natural ally for Poroshenko whose country lost Crimea to annexation by Russia and is fighting a war against Moscow-backed separatists.
    However relations between the two men soured and Saakashvili resigned as governor last November to establish a new political party in opposition to Poroshenko, whom he accused of allowing corruption to flourish.
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