Georgia: Ukraine asked Tbilisi to restore Saakashvili's citizenship
Tamar Chugoshvili, the First Vice Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, claims that the Ukrainian delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) asked its Georgian colleagues to reissue citizenship to former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in order to "spare them from him.", reported Georgia.Online.
"At the last session of PACE, everyone, starting with the leader of the Ukrainian delegation and including other members, begged us to restore Georgian citizenship to this person and spare us from him (which can be taken as an official request) ... In short, the second country is already trying somehow to get rid of him," Chugoshvili wrote on Facebook.
In October 2015, the Georgian Ministry of Justice initiated a procedure for depriving Saakashvili of citizenship. According to the Constitution, a citizen of Georgia cannot be a citizen of another country at the same time. Under the law, when a citizen of Georgia acquires the citizenship of another country, it is a basis for loss of citizenship.
Saakashvili received a Ukrainian passport in late May 2015 so that he could be appointed head of the Odessa Regional State Administration. In November 2016, he resigned from this post.