Saakashvili: Poroshenko threatened me while trying to stop my political criticism
Mikheil Saakashvili, who was recently stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, spoke in an interview with ZIK TV how Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had threatened him in Malta.
Saakashvili said that he is in New York now, and the last time he met with Poroshenko was in Malta at the European People's Party summit.
“The conversation lasted two hours; it was two hours of threats and direct blackmail, calls to stop criticizing the President, to stop political activity. And if I stop the political activity, then I will have a faction in the Parliament in two years, and, I will have, quote, “a niche in Ukrainian politics.” I listened to all threats with a smile I and refused to comply with the requirements,” Saakashvili stated.
After that, according to Saakashvili , Poroshenko passed the message through his intermediaries, that he hadn’t been happy with his tone and his mood.
Earlier, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine informed that they intended not to allow Mikheil Saakashvili into Ukraine should he try to come to Ukraine.
On July 26th, the State Migration Service of Ukraine (DMSU) reported that Poroshenko issued an order revoking Ukrainian citizenship from Mikheil Saakashvili.
Anton Gerashchenko, an Adviser of the MIA (the Ministry of Internal Affairs) of Ukraine and the head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine explained that the termination of Ukrainian citizenship of the former President of Georgia and the former head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, Mikheil Saakashvili, is due to his providing false information when registering for citizenship.
At the same time, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine explained that in March 2015 they refused to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia, because they had seen in the case against him political motives.
Earlier, Sergei Talalayev, a senior partner of the Profit-Consul law firm, in a commentary to Vesti stated that Mikhail Saakashvili had grounds to appeal to the court. In addition, according to him, the principle of leaving a person without citizenship is not valid: they did not have the right to strip Saakashvili of Ukrainian citizenship, since, previously, he had been stripped of Georgian citizenship.