Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili has been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship, he confirmed on Thursday, suggesting he could be stateless.
Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, whom Saakashvili has accused of perpetuating entrenched corruption in the former Soviet republic, deprived him of citizenship by decree, Ukrainian state media reported.
“Poroshenko decided to deprive me of my citizenship in an underhanded way, while I am out of the country!” Saakashvili said on his Facebook page.
Russian state media reported that Saakashvili was in the U.S. at the time.
He was educated in and has maintained close ties with the U.S.
Saakashvili, president of Georgia for nearly a decade until 2013, is wanted there on charges of abuse of office that he has denounced as politically motivated.
He lost his Georgian citizenship in 2015.
“I have only one citizenship, that of Ukraine,” Saakashvili said in the Facebook post.
After supporting Ukraine’s transfer of power to pro-Western leadership under Poroshenko, Saakashvili received Ukrainian citizenship in 2015 and was appointed governor of that country’s prominent Odessa region on the Black Sea.
He resigned from the post in 2016 and blamed Poroshenko for widespread corruption in the country.
Saakashvili led Georgia during a brief war with Russia in 2008, a result of which Georgia lost control of two regions that declared themselves independent states.
The conflict had parallels to one currently underway in Ukraine, where two self-declared separatist republics with ties to Russia have been fighting the Ukrainian military. (dpa/NAN)