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What happened to Saakashvili after his deportation?
Summary
A look back at the days around 18 February 2018, when the opposition leader's removal from Ukraine and a Dutch minister's admission drew attention.
Where was Mikheil Saakashvili on 18 February 2018? Days after being expelled from Ukraine, the leader of the opposition Movement of New Forces party was in the Netherlands.
The sequence began on 12 February 2018. Saakashvili, whom Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko had stripped of Ukrainian citizenship on 26 July 2017, was detained in Kyiv by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was then deported from Ukraine to Poland.
On 14 February 2018 he relocated from Poland to the Netherlands, according to reports at the time.
A Dutch admission on the same day
The Netherlands featured in another political story on 12 February 2018. Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra admitted that he had lied about attending a 2006 meeting with Vladimir Putin. Zijlstra had earlier said that Putin spoke there of plans to expand Russia to include Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states. He now said he had not been present and had borrowed the account from a source.
The two developments were separate, but both involved Ukraine's politics or its place in regional debate, and both unfolded within the same days. By 18 February 2018, Saakashvili's deportation was complete and his move to the Netherlands had been reported, while Zijlstra's retraction was on the public record.
