You're reading: RFE/RL: All eyes on border crossing as Ukraine awaits the return of Saakashvili

RFE/RL: All eyes on border crossing as Ukraine awaits the return of Saakashvili

Published Sept. 10, 2017 at 3:30 pm

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (L) and former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko (R) talk with journalists in a train going to Ukraine from 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

Ukrainian police are bracing themselves at checkpoints on the border with Poland for the expected arrival of Mikheil Saakashvili, the ex-president of Georgia and former governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region.

The 49-year-old Saakashvili has said he is determined to return to Ukraine on September 10 in a bid to reclaim the Ukrainian citizenship that was stripped from him.