Georgia’s third President Mikheil Saakashvili, who currently chairs the executive committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, claims he will return to Georgia for the October 2 municipal elections. 

Saakashvili, who has been charged with several crimes in absentia related to abuse of authority, says that he is not afraid of arrest. 

“The Georgian people will ensure my release. I will inform you on every step I will take. I will do it very openly. Our victory has no alternative,” Saakashvili said. 

Saakashvili left Georgia back in 2013, after the expiration of his second tenure, shortly after the Georgian Dream coalition defeated his United National Movement in the 2012 parliamentary elections. 

Saakashvili still remains the key figure of the United National Movement in Georgia, a largest opposition party in the country which is running in the upcoming elections.

The Georgian Dream government has several times addressed the Ukrainian government to interrupt Saakashvili’s interference in Georgia’s internal issues, ‘because Saakashvili is no longer the citizen of Georgia and is holding an official post in Ukraine as the citizen of Ukraine’.