Ex-Leader of Georgia Confronts Ukraine Agents in Rooftop Standoff
"This could happen to anybody who doesn’t cut a deal with them." Seeking to explain why Ukraine’s security agency, the S.B.U., had tried to grab the former Georgian leader, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, accused Mr. Saakashvili of assisting a criminal organization led by Mr. Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Russian president,
and receiving $500,000 to fund his political activities from a fugitive Ukrainian businessman, Serhiy Kurchenko.
The prosecutor’s accusation that Mr. Saakashvili was collaborating with Mr. Yanukovych seemed to be largely aimed at discrediting the former Georgian
leader, who has attracted support in Ukraine by positioning himself as an uncompromising enemy of Russia, corruption and Mr. Poroshenko.
Dragged from the roof after denouncing Mr. Poroshenko as a traitor and a thief, the former Georgian leader was detained
but then freed by his supporters, who, amid raucous scenes on the street, blocked a security service van before it could take Mr. Saakashvili to a Kiev detention center and allowed him to escape.
As a regional governor in Ukraine committed to fighting corruption, he clashed with just about
everybody, including his estranged former ally, Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko.
As president of Georgia for nearly a decade, Mr. Saakashvili initially won plaudits in Washington
and other Western capitals for rooting out corruption and turning his small nation into a rare success story among former Soviet lands.
Mr. Saakashvili’s return to Ukraine infuriated the government, raising political temperature as Mr. Poroshenko struggled with a Russian-backed armed rebellion in the eastern part of the country
and mounting criticism from political opponents that, like Mr. Yanukovych, he was tolerating and benefiting from rampant corruption.