21 February 2018•Update: 21 February 2018
By Ali Cura
KIEV
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been stateless since July 2017, has been banned entry into Ukraine till 2021.
According to Interfax-Ukraine news agency Wednesday, Saakashvili’s lawyer Ruslan Chernolutsky said the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service issued the ban.
Chernolutsky claimed that the decision of the border service was illegal saying he intended to appeal against it.
Last week, Saakashvili was detained at a restaurant in Kiev and deported to Poland, according to Ukrainian border service spokesman Oleg Slobodyan.
A local report said he was given permission to stay in the Netherlands on basis of family reunion as Saakashvili is married to a Dutch woman.
After serving as president of Georgia for 10 years, Saakashvili was appointed as the governor of Ukraine's southern Odessa region by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2015 but he resigned the following year.
He then became an outspoken critic of the Ukrainian president and accused him of corruption.
Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship while in the U.S. in mid-2017, rendering him stateless.
However, in September he crossed into Ukraine from Poland with the help of his supporters.
His Georgian citizenship had already been revoked after getting a Ukrainian passport in 2015.
In 2014, former Georgian Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili was also sentenced to three years for abusing his powers.
