LUGANSK, October 5. /TASS/. The Prosecutor-General's Office of the Lugansk People's Republic has opened a criminal case against Georgia's former president, Mikhail Saakashvili, who is currently in custody in Georgia.

As follows from a news release uploaded to the PGO's website, it has been established that a group of snipers arrived in Kiev from Georgia at Saakashvili's invitation at the end of 2013. At the end of February the snipers opened fire on both protesters and police in Kiev's Independence Square.

In December 2017, a court probing into the case of Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovich was shown video recordings proving that shots were fired from the building of a hotel and Kiev's conservatory during maidan protests in 2014. Two mercenaries - both Georgian citizens - agreed to testify in court by a video link under oath they had been brought to Kiev to trigger unrest.

One of Yanukovich's lawyers later said that the masterminds of mass unrest involving the use of firearms were former parliamentary speaker Andrei Parubiy and former member of parliament Sergey Pashinsky. Both were acting on orders from Pyotr Poroshenko and Mikhail Saakashvili.

The shooting in Kiev's Independence Square on February 20, 2014, claimed the lives of 78 civilians and 13 police.