Analysis

Zelensky returns Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship

The newly-installed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a decree reinstating the citizenship of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who previously served as the governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region under former president Petro Poroshenko.

The former Odessa governor was deprived of his citizenship in 2017 after the Ukrainian authorities claimed that he had failed to provide information on his Georgian criminal record when applying for citizenship.

Soon after the Ukrainian presidential election, the former governor said that he would return to Ukraine and then to his home country, Georgia, and has not excluded a return to front-line politics in the future.