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Saakashvili promises more protests in Ukraine

On Monday, Saakashvili was detained in Ukraine and then deported to Poland
Mikhail Saakashvili EPA-EFE/JACEK TURCZYK
Mikhail Saakashvili
© EPA-EFE/JACEK TURCZYK

KIEV, February 13. /TASS/. Ukraine is heading into mass protests against the incumbent authorities, Mikhail Saakashvili, who is a former president of Georgia and simultaneously a former governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region, said on Tuesday at a news conference in Warsaw.

"I promise we’ll organize mas protest movements and will push the aside peacefully," the Ukrainian TV channel Newsone quoted him.

He said he would tap the right moment for returning to Ukraine and joining the protests.

Saakashvili also promised his team and he would wring Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko’s head off and would put him in jail.

"I promise we’ll wring [businessman Rinat] Ahmetov’s neck, and we’ll do so to Poroshenko and his gang, and we’ll wring [Prosecutor General Yuri] Lutsenko’s neck," the belligerent Saakashvili said. "And it’s not Poland they’ll go to because Europe won’t accept them. They’ll go straight to Ukrainian jail."

He spoke with indignantly about his most recent deportation from Ukraine in spite of the continuing court litigations where he was involved.

"How on earth am I supposed to appear in the courtrooms over there?" Saakashvili said. "They rank me among the criminals, don’t they? What’s the way for me to reach out to the Ukrainian courts? Or else, will they put me on the list of wanted criminals?" "

"You’re welcome to take me back to Ukraine because I want to stand trial there," he said addressing the offer to Prosecutor General Lutsenko.

On Monday, Saakashvili was detained in Ukraine and then deported to Poland where he said later that he would not give up his attempts to return to Ukraine.

He said after arrival in Warsaw that he did not plan to seek political asylum in Poland and that the Polish authorities had given state guards to him.

Saakashvili’s Rukh Novikh Sil [New Forces Movement] party has scheduled mass demonstrations against the incumbent government in Kiev and other cities for February 18.