Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Thursday he has stripped former Georgian president and one-time ally Mikhail Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship, paving the way for his possible extradition to Georgia.
The charismatic reformer came to power in Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution but then fell from grace and is now wanted by Georgian prosecutors on charges of abuse of office during his nine-year rule that he insists are politically motivated.
In a statement sent to AFP, Saakashvili vowed: "I will fight for my legal right to return to Ukraine!"
Poroshenko's administration sent AFP a statement on Thursday confirming the president had signed a decree revoking Saakashvili's citizenship, saying this was for "giving incorrect information when he submitted his application."
Poroshenko "signed the relevant decree" on the recommendation of the state migration service which provided "convincing evidence," the statement said.
Saakashvili does not have any other citizenship since Georgia took away his passport in December 2015, after he acquired Ukrainian citizenship to become a governor of Ukraine's Odessa region.
Georgia's leadership has not yet commented publicly on Poroshenko's decision. Saakashvili's native country is seeking his extradition on charges connected with the violent dispersal of protests during his presidency and a raid on a private television station.
Saakashvili, who is currently in New York, according to his representative Zoe Reyners, slammed the decision, saying in a Facebook post that "there is an attempt under way to force me to become a refugee."
The decision was first announced late Wednesday in an indirectly worded statement by the Ukrainian migration service.
It said Georgia had provided "materials on Mikhail Saakashvili" to Ukrainian prosecutors which the migration service then studied and passed to the presidential commission on citizenship.
'Underhanded'
"Today I am being subjected to the same approaches that are used by Ukraine's prosecutors or bureaucrats against regular Ukrainians, whose rights are spat upon," Saakashvili said in a video posted on Facebook.
"Poroshenko decided to deprive me of my citizenship in an underhanded way, while I am out of the country!"
The announcement came after Poroshenko met Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili in Tbilisi last week.
Saakashvili wrote on Facebook on Monday that he had information that Poroshenko had also visited billionaire ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, who leads the ruling party behind the scenes.
"Their secret meeting lasted more than two hours and was almost entirely about me," Saakashvili wrote.
Saakashvili is now in the United States, and the decree means he will be unable to return to Ukraine, an MP from Poroshenko's bloc, Sergiy Leshchenko, wrote on Facebook.
"Practically they are forcing Saakashvili to take refuge in America and forget about Ukrainian politics," Leshchenko wrote.
Saakashvili's party, 'Movement of New Forces,' (MNF) said if correct, the withdrawal showed that Poroshenko had chosen "a path of anti-constitutional acts for the sake of the usurpation and retention of power at all costs."
In a post on Facebook, the party accused Poroshenko of betraying the reformist aims of the 2013-2014 pro-European 'Maidan' uprising that helped bring him to power.
Reformist lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem, who is not a member of MNF, condemned the decision to withdraw Saakashvili's citizenship.
"This is the stupidest thing that could have been thought up - a sign of weakness that reflects badly on the president of Ukraine," he said in a post on Facebook that was shared by Saakashvili.
According to Ukrainian legislation, only Ukrainian citizens can lead political parties or be elected to parliament.
MNF has been campaigning for early parliamentary elections. According to a June survey by Ukrainian group Rating, 2 percent of Ukrainians would back the party, while 6 percent favor Poroshenko's bloc.
Political analyst Vladimir Fesenko said the move showed Poroshenko was under pressure both from Georgia and from powerful political forces within Ukraine.
"On the field of the battle against corruption, Saakashvili made too many enemies among the ruling Ukrainian elite," Fesenko said.
Saakashvili notably clashed with Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, whom he accused of funding a private militia through corrupt means. The accusation prompted Avakov to throw a glass of water on him.
Saakashvili, whose country was attacked by Russian forces in 2008 and who is despised by the Kremlin, has seemed a natural ally for Poroshenko whose country lost Crimea to annexation by Russia and is fighting a war against Moscow-backed separatists.
Known for sweeping pro-Western reforms in his native Georgia which he led from 2004 to 2013, Saakashvili was a strong supporter of Ukraine's Maidan uprising and as a reward Poroshenko appointed him as governor of Ukraine's Odessa region in 2015.
However relations between the two men soured and Saakashvili resigned as governor last November to establish a new political party in opposition to Poroshenko, whom he accused of allowing corruption to flourish and he was being held back in his efforts to fight corruption among high-ranking officials.
The fluent Ukrainian speaker had repeated run-ins with some members of Poroshenko's inner circle and was frequently accused of having outsized political ambitions of his own.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev mocked arch-Kremlin foe Saakashvili's on-off Ukrainian citizenship on Thursday, calling his situation a "fantastical tragicomedy" in a comment on Facebook.
