You're reading: Ukrainian border guards won’t allow Saakashvili into country with invalid passport

Ukrainian border guards will act in accordance with the country’s legislation if Mikheil Saakashvili attempts to cross the state border, the Ukrainian State Border Service said.

“If we put surnames aside, there’s only one algorithm [applying to] a person that has an invalid passport: we seize the passport and forbid his crossing the border,” the service’s spokesman Oleh Slobodian told Interfax-Ukraine.

This person should return to the place they come from, he said.

Former Georgian president and ex-head of Odesa State Regional Administration Mikheil Saakashvili earlier promised to return to Ukraine on September 10. The politician said he hopes his supporters will gather near the checkpoint.

On July 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued a decree revoking Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship. The politician was in the United States at the time, after which he arrived in Poland with a Ukrainian passport and then went on to Lithuania.