Again free

On Monday, the Pechersky court of Kyiv refused to send the ex-president of Georgia, the leader of the Ukrainian Rukh of New Forces, Mikhail Saakashvili, under house arrest. The vessels on charges of "assistance to the participants of criminal organizations" and "concealing their criminal activities", if one is destined to take place, the former President of Georgia will wait for free.

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies believe that Saakashvili, who over the past weeks organized several thousands of protest against corruption in Kyiv, illegally received money from Ukrainian businessman Sergei Kurchenko who had fled to Russia. According to investigators, the politician tried to organize a coup in the country in the interests of the environment of ex-president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.

In the morning, supporters of Mikhail Saakashvili gathered at the building of the Pechersk court. The police in advance strengthened the protection of the building: dozens of special forces lined up around him in several rows. During the court hearing, the prosecutors asked the judge for house arrest for the former Georgian president. The judge indicated to the charges of non -stiff materials and refused to limit Saakashvili’s freedom to court - this decision became unexpected for many, but, it seems, not for Saakashvili himself, who called him a “victory of logic”. “The system is falling apart,” he said in his first commentary after the verdict of judges, adding that “does not apply for national leadership” in Ukraine.

Mikhail Saakashvili was detained in the evening of December 8 in the Kiev apartment of one of his associates and placed in the investigative insulator of the Ukrainian Security Service. The opposition policy is charged with part 2 of Article 256 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "Promoting the participants of criminal organizations and the concealment of their criminal activities." The punishment under this article implies imprisonment for a term of 3 to 5 years. In protest against his arrest, Mikhail Saakashvili announced a hunger strike .

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On Monday to support Saakashvili, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada came to the court, including the head of the Fatherland party, Yulia Tymoshenko , who agreed to take the accused on bail. The prosecutors insisted on the imprisonment of Saakashvili under house arrest, citing the fact that the deputies who agreed to vouch for him, including Yulia Tymoshenko, "all the details of the case are unknown."

“This is situational support. Thus, it is in the spotlight and uses the court as an informational occasion for this,” says Ukrainian political scientist Vladimir Fesenko . “At the same time, Yulia Vladimirovna recalls that she was also in the place of Saakashvili in the same court (October 11, 2011, the Pechersk court to 7 years in prison for abuse of powers with Russia in 2009, after The Euromaidan was released in the summer of 2014 by the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The former Georgian President won significantly, for the authorities there were new risks as a result of this war, and now we must somehow discharge and neutralize this situation. Saakashvili will have to be released, I think, in order to partially defuse the crisis situation on the eve of the New Year holidays, and then tighten it, using purely legal and bureaucratic procedures. "

Supporters of Mikhail Saakashvili release him from the SBU car during the shares on December 5:

Last Sunday, December 10, Saakashvili supporters reached a new march in the center of Kyiv, demanding to free their leader and declare impeachment to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. According to various estimates, from several thousand to several tens of thousands of people, including representatives of Ukrainian right -winged nationalist movements, participated in the action. The demonstrators, accompanied by the police, passed from Taras Shevchenko Park in the same name Boulevard and Khreshchatyk to Independence Square, where a rally took place. The co -founder of the Kiev Center for the Free Economy named after Kakha Bendukidze, comrade -in -arms of Mikhail Saakashvili Vladimir Fedorin tells about Sunday events in the center of the Ukrainian capital in an interview with Radio, Vladimir Fedorin.

- The march and rally on Sunday collected, according to various sources, from five to ten thousand demonstrators, the organizers called fifty thousand, and the police reported two and a half thousand participants. How many people went to Sunday in support of Mikhail Saakashvili according to your estimates?

- Let me not play in this digital equalibrics. I will say differently: starting on October 17 ( protesters on this day, they established tents with the Verkhovna Rada with the demands to deprive the deputies of parliamentary immunity, adopt the law "On the creation of an anti -corruption court" and approve the new rules of the elections. - approx. RS ) Protestes are gathering more and more people each time. I think that in the last Sunday march there were at least one and a half times more people than in the previous one. It is very difficult to count marches, because there is a gathering point, there is a place where a rally is held, and there is a movement itself. This number does not necessarily coincide. Usually it is during movement that the maximum number of participants in the action is observed. I can confirm my words about the fact that this time was one and a half times more demonstrators than last time, I could confirm that the camera installed on Shevchenko Boulevard, on December 3, recorded that the column was from the head to the tail of 14 minutes, on December 10, the movement lasted more than 20 minutes.

- The media reported that after a rally on Independence Square, activists went to the SBU of the SBU, where Saakashvili was, and on the way they defeated the window of one of the stores of the Roshen confusion corporation owned by Petro Poroshenko.

“ Opposite me is a man who drove the provocateurs from the store,” the coordinator of the Kiev organization of the RCS Semen Krivonos. We think that one of the players from the Ukrainian authorities sent provocateurs. Semyon tells me that there is an appropriate video of the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty, and he is on this video. So with this provocation, everything is clear to us.

- On December 5, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine published a record of allegedly a conversation between Saakashvili and the Ukrainian oligarch Sergei Kurchenko, who fled after Euromaidan, during which Saakashvili allegedly agrees with Kurchenko about cooperation. The prosecutor's office claims that Kurchenko financed the organized Saakashvili in Kyiv of shares. On Monday, it became known that Kurchenko filed a lawsuit against the General Prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko for the spread of slander regarding telephone negotiations and his connections with Saakashvili.

I am sure that this is a complete fake, audio recordings are fabricated

- I am sure that this is a complete fake, audio recordings are fabricated. Yuri Lutsenko ... Before the court’s sentence, it is probably impossible to say that, but I think that in recent weeks he has committed a crime for a crime at his post. Starting with the disclosure of agents of the Independent Anti -Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) created with the support of the West and continuing the political repression, which he is engaged in a specially trained prosecutor Konstantin Kulik. Nabu accuses him of illegal enrichment.

-Activists of the Saakashvili party demand the resignation of Yuri Lutsenko because of political repression, failure to fulfill their requirement to adopt the law "On the impeachment of the President of Ukraine" and "On the creation of the anti-corruption court", due to unwillingness to finally approve the new election law.

- With Yuri Lutsenko, I think everything is clear. This is required not only by those who went to Sunday in Kyiv, but also by civil activists, "Avtomaydan", which on Saturday consisting of almost 300 cars picked the country's country house. Unfortunately, or, perhaps, fortunately, Lutsenko committed political suicide.

-The wife of the ex-president of Georgia Sandra Rolofs, who participated in the Sunday march, is convinced that the authorities of Georgia and Ukraine, acting together, prepare Mikhail’s extradition from Kyiv in Tbilisi. How likely is such a scenario now?

- Sandra is a man with an impeccable reputation, and her words should be treated very seriously.

- Marches and other protests of the supporters of Mikhail Saakashvili, as announced, will continue until all the requirements put forward not only in Kyiv, but also in the regions of Ukraine?

- Our goal is to make people come out more and more every time. So that there is neither bloodshed nor violence, but there was a demonstration of the will of the people to the fact that the aged elite should leave, and I think that we will succeed, ” Vladimir Fedorin is convinced.

The head of the Ukrainian Institute of Social and Political Design Andrei Miselyuk , on the contrary, believes that the large-scale support of Saakashvili by Ukrainians is a "myth":

It is not included in the first five of the most popular Ukrainian politicians

- The objective data of the polls indicate that the popularity of Saakashvili from the time of his resignation from the post of head of the Odessa regional administration has decreased significantly. It is not included in the first five of the most popular Ukrainian politicians, and his "ruh of new forces" support no more than three percent of Ukrainians. With such a rating, the Saakashvili party will not be able to overcome the five percent barrier in the Verkhovna Radu elections. As for Kiev, as the released audio recordings of Lutsenko (allegedly testifying to the transfer of money from Kurchenko to the people of Saakashvili. - Note by RS) , in the Ukrainian capital the party Saakashvili can mobilize several thousands of supporters at any moment. To do this, they have infrastructure and finances from the environment of a fugitive Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, which contributes to the situation in Ukraine to destabilize. They swing the situation in Ukraine with the hands of Saakashvili. It is not necessary to talk about "megapopularity" in our country of the ex-president of Georgia and its party.

- Do you think genuine audio recordings of the alleged telephone conversations of Saakashvili and the Begly oligarch Kurchenko, which, from which, who claimed, did Saakashvili received at least five hundred thousand dollars?

- This can only be said by the court. So far it looks like this: the prosecutor general united this data, but Saakashvili did not follow a substantial reaction with the refutation. The accusations are put forward. And along the extreme measures, part of the facts in question in the records took place in reality.

- surrounded by Petro Poroshenko, they say that Saakashvili is a member of the Kremlin’s new plan called “Russian Winter”. The purpose of this plan is the overthrow of the Ukrainian authorities.

-This is not some plan that exists at once and dedicated, say, by December 2017. It is from time to time actualized when forces appear within Ukraine, which are able to promote a significant destabilization of the situation. This is primarily in the interests of the current Ukrainian opposition and Viktor Yanukovych. They really want to use the weaknesses of the Ukrainian authorities from different angles in their interests. All these shares of Saakashvili-and the breakthrough of the Ukrainian-Polish border, and the installation of the tent town near the Verkhovna Rada-are monitored by these forces (the environment of Yanukovych.-approx. RS) , these forces are welcomed, there is certainly some coordination between them, ”said political scientist Andrei Miselyuk.

On December 17, the associates of Mikhail Saakashvili are already announcing the next many thousands of a rally in the center of the Ukrainian capital.