The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Lugansk People’s Republic suspects former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, a criminal case suspect, of involvement in events that took place in Kiev’s main square (maidan) in 2014, the PGO press service reported.
“Investigators have ascertained that a group of snipers arrived in Kiev from Georgia in late 2013 at Saakashvili’s invitation. In late February 2014, they delivered fire at protesters and police officers in Kiev’s Independence Square in late February 2014,” the report said.
The shooting on February 20, 2014 left 78 civilians and 13 police officers dead.
On October 5, 2021,the PGO instituted criminal proceedings against Mikhail Saakashvili (aged 54, according to his Ukrainian passport) over encroachment on the life of law-enforcement personnel and the murder of two or more persons.
Georgian police detained Saakashvili on October 1 after he had posted a video announcing his arrival in Batumi. The former president is under arrest in the town of Rustavi near Tbilisi. Saakashvili was president of Georgia from January 2004 to November 2013. He left the country several days before the end of his tenure. Georgian law-enforcers filed four criminal cases against him; verdicts have already been passed in two cases.
Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship. In 2015-2016, he was chairman of the Odessa regional state administration. Later on, he was stripped of citizenship and left the country. In May 2019, Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky restored the Ukrainian citizenship to Saakashvili.
In one of his interviews, the ex Georgian president called the Minsk Agreements “a treaty on Ukraine’s capitulation” which was “ruinous for Ukraine’s statehood. *i*t
