Ukraine’s Interior Ministry: Saakashvili was released to avoid the worst

The National Police and National Guard of Ukraine allowed to release former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili from the National Security Service van to minimize the consequences and avoid bloodshed, Ivan Varchenko, Adviser to the minister of internal affairs told Ukrainian media.

"As for taking Saakashvili away from the SBU vehicle, I think that law enforcement officers from the National Security Service and the National Guard, given the worst consequences that could have arisen from the forceful actions, probably let it happen without applying force to those citizens who committed illegal actions," Obozrevatel quotes the adviser as saying.

At the same time, he specified that the law enforcers acted within the framework of the current legislation. "Accordingly, now in this situation, the police will implement instructions to be given by the investigation. Saakashvili should be brought to the investigators. And now we need to find a legal way to do it," Varchenko noted.

According to him, the facts provided by the Prosecutor General about the likely collusion between Saakashvili and the former Ukrainian oligarch Sergey Kurchenko are more than a serious statement that the Ukrainian society "reacted in the right way and allowed the Prosecutor General’s Office and the SBU to do their thing and interrogate Saakashvili as a participant in this conversation."

As EADaily previously reported, a search was carried out in Saakashvili's apartment in Kiev on Tuesday morning, the politician himself climbed onto the roof of the eight-story building where he lives and threatened to jump down. Later he was detained and taken out of the house by law enforcers, he was put in a car and an attempt was made to take him away, but the political supporters went on a rampage, blocked the car, and punched its wheels.

Then Saakashvili's supporters freed him from the law enforcers’ van by force and came along with the politician to the Supreme Rada, where they demanded impeachment of the president and the resignation of the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office and the SBU.

Now the situation has stabilized. Saakashvili and his supporters settled in the tent camp outside the Rada. And in the Ukrainian parliament, for whose protection additional police forces are drawn up, the public prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko is now addressing the deputies; he keeps accusing Mikheil Saakashvili of attempts to overthrow the government in the interests and with the money of former president Viktor Yanukovych's representatives.