Saakashvili’s permission to stay in Ukraine extended to March 1
Mikheil Saakashvili, the former President of Georgia, leader of the Rukh Novykh Syl (Movement of New Forces) party, said that the State Migration Service extended his term of stay in Ukraine until March 1, 2018. It was only yesterday that he said he was going to be arrested allegedly by order of the President.
"Very polite employees of the State Migration Service issued me a document on the extension of the term of legal stay in Ukraine for another three months... At the same time, a threat is still there. The SBU received a search warrant for my apartment and offices in the event of a coup d’état. The surveillance over me and my closest associates doubled in the last days I think, and I already spoke about Poroshenko's orders yesterday," he wrote in Facebook.
To support his claims, he published photographs of the relevant document permitting his stay in Ukraine.
Saakashvili received a Ukrainian passport in late May 2015 so that he could be appointed the head of the Odessa Regional State Administration. According to the Constitution, a citizen of Georgia cannot simultaneously be a citizen of another country and in October 2015, the Georgian Ministry of Justice began the procedure for depriving Saakashvili of citizenship.
In November 2016, Saakashvili resigned from the post of head of Odessa State Administration and in the summer of 2017 Poroshenko terminated his Ukrainian citizenship. This was done because he allegedly filed inaccurate information when filing documents for citizenship. Saakashvili was in the US at the time.
In early September of 2017, Saakashvili illegally crossed the border of Ukraine with the help of his supporters and soon turned to the State Migration Service with a request to grant him the status of a person in need of additional protection. On October 24, the State Migration Service denied him refugee status.