Speech and coconuts

What Mikhail Saakashvili did after the resignation of the President of Georgia

Former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili returned to big politics, leading the Odessa region in Ukraine. This is the largest “political transfer” in the latest history of the countries that were formed in the USSR. After resolving the President of Georgia in November 2013, Saakashvili did not return to his homeland (Georgian security forces accuse him of abuse of authority and embezzlement)-he settled in the Fashion of New York district of Williamsburg and concentrated mainly on teaching. "Medusa" tells what Saakashvili has been doing in the last and a half years.

Saakashvili - teacher. Without waiting for the end of the presidential term, Mikhail Saakashvili at the end of October 2013 made a farewell speech and flew to Brussels - apparently, fearing criminal prosecution in his homeland (rumors about this appeared immediately after his party lost the parliamentary elections). Saakashvili found a new job in a couple of months: already in December 2013, he became a teacher of the School of Law and Diplomacy named after Fletcher at the University of Tafts in Massachusetts. The Saakashvili contract was designed for one semester of 2014, he gave lectures on international relations, politics and European government. Also, according to Saakashvili himself, after the resignation, he performed with speeches that "were extremely well paid."

Criminal cases. In March 2014, Saakashvili became a defendant in several criminal cases at once. At first, the Georgian security forces called him for interrogation in connection with the pardon in 2008 by four employees of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs convicted of involvement in the murder. After the former president refused to fly from the States for interrogation, law enforcement officers also had other claims. In July 2014, Saakashvili was accused of abuse of powers when dispersing the opposition campaign in 2007, as well as that he selected the Imady television company Badri Patarkatsishvili. Finally, in August, the court decided on his absentee arrest. Then Saakashvili became a defendant in the case of embezzlement of public funds for personal needs (about five million dollars); The accounts and property of the policy in Georgia were arrested, and he himself was put on the international wanted list. Saakashvili denies accusations and considers them political revenge. In early 2015, Ukraine officially refused Georgia to issue Saakashvili.

Euromaidan. Mass protests in Kyiv began just at the moment when Saakashvili left the post of President of Georgia. Saakashvili (once headed by Georgia after the “Rose Revolution” ) actively supported civil actions against the government of Viktor Yanukovych; He repeatedly flew to Kyiv and spoke to the demonstrators. In his speeches, as in numerous interviews of the Western press, Saakashvili spoke extremely negatively about Russia, accusing it of all the troubles of both the Georgian and Ukrainian peoples; He reminded of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and advised, on the eve of the referendum in Crimea, to see the example of Georgia, "what the Russian authorities are capable of."

Life in Williamsburg. The most striking description of the post-presidential life of Saakashvili turned out to be the journalist The New York Times Jason Horovitz-in an article published in September 2014. Saakashvili in it is represented by an ordinary resident of Williamsburg: he wears red shorts and acid-green sneakers, travels on a bicycle, eats in fashion institutions, discusses the cost of hipsters and complains about the cost of housing in the fashionable area of ​​New York: “I am not that poor-pound, but prices are bitten.” In the reporting of Khorvotets, Saakashvili goes to the street market for coconuts - and recalls how one of the Arab sheikhs once presented him 20 thousand palm trees - just like that, as a “personal gift”.

Return to politics. Petro Poroshenko has been familiar with Saakashvili since their studies at Taras Shevchenko Kiev University. After winning the election, the Ukrainian president has repeatedly offered Saakashvili various posts in the government. The former President of Georgia initially refused, explaining this with an unwillingness to part with Georgian citizenship: only a person with a Ukrainian passport can occupy state debts in Ukraine, and dual citizenship in Georgia is allowed in exceptional cases (and for this it is necessary to turn to the president of the country). In February 2015, Saakashvili was appointed freezing adviser to Poroshenko and the head of the International Advisory Council for Presidential Reforms. And on May 30 it became known that the former Georgian leader still became a citizen of Ukraine - Poroshenko signed the decree on this simultaneously with the decision on the appointment of Saakashvili the head of the Odessa region. Georgian President Georgy Margvelashvili has already called the Saakashvili decision to make Ukrainian citizenship "insulting to the whole country."