PhotoMOSCOW — Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, was arrested on Friday in Ukraine during a late-night police raid on an apartment where he had been hiding after his escape from custody following a rooftop struggle with security agents this week. Scores of Mr. Saakashvili’s supporters gathered overnight outside the detention center, which is operated by the domestic security agency, and chanted “glory to Ukraine” and other slogans. A few hours before he was detained, Mr. Saakashvili had called for weekend protests against Mr. Poroshenko in Independence Square, an area in Kiev known as Maidan that was the center of the earlier demonstrations against Mr. Yanukovych. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyBut few analysts expect Mr. Saakashvili’s supporters, who see the former Georgian leader as a hero in the battle against corruption, to generate anything like the wave of discontent that toppled Mr. Yanukovych in February 2014. Mr. Lutsenko, the prosecutor general, this week accused him of receiving $500,000 for his political activities from a fugitive Ukrainian businessman close to Mr. Yanukovych, who has lived in exile in Russia since his ouster.

Source: New York Times December 09, 2017 01:52 UTC