As president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili was lauded in the West for his reforms, which transformed the country from an almost failed state to a model in the fight against corruption. But he led his country into a disastrous war with Russia in 2008 and was defeated in parliamentary elections in 2012. Now he’s back - not in his native Georgia but as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's top foreign policy adviser and head of Ukraine's Advisory International Council on Reforms.

Saakashvili gives FRANCE 24's Robert Parsons his point of view on the Ukrainian crisis. "Russia is after the whole of Ukraine, not only the east or the south of Ukraine", he says.
"Ukraine is like West Berlin now," he adds. "The idea of West Berlin was that it was crucially important to the Soviet Union for Stalin to take over West Berlin. And then the West stood up and made West Berlin a showcase, which means that first it was defended physically, and then it was made into a very successful case in parallel."
 

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