Thousands Of Protesters Rally With Saakashvili In Kyiv, Amid Heavy Police Presence
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- Thousands of protesters gathered amid a heavy police presence in front of Ukraine’s parliament for a rally organized by firebrand politician Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and governor of Ukraine's Odesa region.
Saakashvili, who has been stripped of both his Georgian and Ukrainian citizenship, had called for the demonstration in a speech in the Black Sea port of Odesa last month after he returned to Ukraine in defiance of the government.
All of the political parties that have seats in the Verkhovna Rada and are not part of President Petro Poroshenko’s ruling coalition were represented at the rally, where demonstrators called for the creation of anticorruption courts, the abolition of parliamentary immunity, and an overhaul of Ukraine's electoral legislation.
Many shouted “Together to victory!” and “Bandits out!,” a slogan popularized during the massive Euromaidan protests that pushed Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014 and raised expectations of reform in a country long plagued by corruption.
Tensions have been running high after the SBU security agency warned on October 16 that “armed provocations” were planned for the protest and that agents had thwarted an effort by two former activists of a group it called the Revolutionary Right Forces to acquire automatic weapons and rocket launchers to be used during the rally.
Saakashvili has pledged the demonstration would be peaceful, but security was tight. The authorities set up cordons in front of parliament and closed off streets in the government quarter of central Kyiv. Demonstrators could only enter the rally area after passing through metal detectors.
“People who are coming tomorrow to the Verkhovna Rada are in a peaceful, calm, decisive mood.... We just have to show that we are a calm force,” Saakashvili told RFE/RL on October 16.
“I think this is just the beginning of a great process. People must come to say that nobody will talk to us like this...to explain that we are not goats, that we have our rights and dignity,” he said.
Saakashvili was previously an ally of Poroshenko, who appointed him governor of Odesa in 2015.
He resigned in November 2016, complaining of rampant corruption and saying reform efforts were being blocked, and has since turned his outspoken rhetoric against Poroshenko and his allies.
Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of Ukrainian citizenship in July, when he was outside the country. He lost his Georgian citizenship in 2015, and authorities in Tbilisi have begun criminal proceedings against him.
Saakashvili forced his way back into Ukraine on September 10, defying border guards and vowing to reenter politics.