Another item from RFE/RL's news desk:
Ukraine Prosecutors Launch Probe Into Saakashvili's Expulsion In 2018
Ukrainian prosecutors have opened a criminal probe into former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s deportation from Ukraine in 2018.
The Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office said on October 7 that the investigation was launched after Saakashvili filed a complaint over the "abduction and violent actions against" him and "his illegal" deportation to Poland last year.
In May, Ukraine's new President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reinstated Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship almost two years after it was removed by Zelenskiy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
In February 2018, Saakashvili was detained in Kyiv, taken to the airport, and flown to Poland.
Days later, Ukraine's border service banned Saakashvili from entering Ukraine until February 13, 2021.
Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship and appointed to the Odesa governor's post by Poroshenko in 2015.
Authorities in Tbilisi stripped Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship on grounds that Georgia does not allow dual citizenship.
When relations between Poroshenko and Saakashvili soured over reform efforts and the fight against corruption, the Ukrainian president sacked Saakashvili from the governor's post in November 2016.
In July 2017, after Saakashvili created the Movement of New Forces opposition party, Poroshenko issued a decree that stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship.
Based on reporting by 112.international and unian.ua
Here's an item from RFE/RL Washington correspondent Todd Prince:
U.S. Lawyer Spent Nearly $100,000 To Boost Zelenskiy's Image In Washington
WASHINGTON -- An American attorney spent nearly $100,000 out of his own pocket to boost the profile of Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington shortly before -- and after -- he won the Ukrainian presidency in a landslide.
Marcus Cohen spent more than $23,000 on travel, lodging, and food and he shuttled between Washington and Kyiv over a four-month period, according to an October 2 Justice Department foreign-agent filing.
He also paid nearly $70,000 to a lobby firm that organized three days of meetings for him and Zelenskiy campaign members in Washington with State Department officials, think-tank analysts, former congressmen, as well as Donald Trump’s former spokesman Sean Spicer and former campaign staffer Matthew Mowers.
Cohen said in the filing that his work for the Zelenskiy campaign and later administration was not based on any formal written contract -- as is often the case with lobbying efforts -- or verbal agreement.
The attorney "engaged in efforts for the benefit of the Principal on his own initiative, he received no compensation for those efforts, and his collaborations with the Principal resulted from informal understandings that developed on an instance-by-instance basis," the filing said.
The Principal is listed on the filing as "Volodymyr Zelenskiy -- Servant of the People [a reference to the Servant of the People Party he founded]," both as candidate and then president of Ukraine.
Cohen "provided internal advice" to Zelenskiy’s team before and after the election "on proposed and actual interactions with the U.S. government as well as on campaign communications," according to the filing. His point of contact in Zelenskiy’s circle was Ivan Bakanov, the campaign's chief of staff who was later appointed head of the nation’s security service.
Bakanov, 45, is also Zelenskiy's former business partner.
Cohen, who spoke with RFE/RL in an exclusive interview in August about this work, made the filing "at the instruction of the Justice Department." His work ended in June, based on the expense report attached to the filing.
