Ukraine detains Georgia’s former president

FILE: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi, March 22, 2008 (Photo By Jfimley James Fimley – Own work, Public Domain)

MOSCOW — Ukrainian police have detained the former president of Georgia who has emerged as an anti-corruption campaigner in his new country.

Police went to detain Mikheil Saakashvili Tuesday morning. He went up on the roof of his home in Kyiv to protest, attracting a crowd of supporters downstairs. Footage from the scene showed Saakashvili being taken away while several hundred protesters were blocking the road.

Saakashvili left Georgia in 2013 after serving as president for nearly a decade, and later was appointed governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region.

But he quit in 2016, complaining that his efforts to root out corruption suffered official obstruction.

His Ukrainian citizenship was revoked this year while he was out of the country, but he returned in September after supporters broke through a police line at the Polish border.