Associated Press: Saakashvili's Ukraine gambit a typically headstrong move - Sep. 10, 2017

Associated Press: Saakashvili’s Ukraine gambit a typically headstrong move

Published Sept. 10, 2017 at 6:02 pm

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili speaks with journalists at the railway station in Przemysl, southeastern Poland, on Sept. 10. Tbilisi has asked Kyiv to extradite former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is locked in a feud with Ukraine's leader, authorities said on Sept. 5. Saakashvili, 49, is credited with pushing through pro-Western reforms in his native Georgia which he led from 2004 to 2013. In the wake of the pro-Western revolution in Kyiv he moved to Ukraine in 2015 to work for the country's authorities as governor of the key Odessa region on the Black Sea.

Photo by AFP

MOSCOW — Mikheil Saakashvili’s brash attempt Sunday to enter Ukraine echoes the day he burst into the Georgian parliament with a crowd of supporters, chased the president out of the building and into resignation, and set himself up as the country’s next leader.

Saakashvili’s seemingly fireproof self-confidence and headstrong actions brought him both admiration and disdain as Georgia’s leader and later as governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region. His native Georgia wants him extradited. Ukraine has stripped him of citizenship.