Veterans of Ukraine’s volunteer Donbas Battalion burned tires in front of the Presidential Administration building in Kyiv late on Nov. 18 to protest the kidnapping of four associates of ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Burning tires have become a revolutionary symbol in Ukraine since the riots on Hrushevsky Street in Kyiv in January 2014 during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Activists earlier went to President Petro Poroshenko’s mansion in the village of Kozyn south of Kyiv as part of the protest.
Four Georgian associates of Saakashvili, including a journalist and two veterans of the war with Russia, were kidnapped by camouflaged masked people on Nov. 17, according to Saakashvili, several eyewitnesses of the events and video footage.
Saakashvili believes the kidnappings to be a political vendetta by Poroshenko.
Protesters burn tires in front of the Presidential Administration late on Nov. 18.
Saakashvili said late on Oct. 18 that, according to his sources, the kidnapped Georgians could be on a ferry traveling from the Ukrainian city of Chornomorsk to the Georgian city of Poti.
“All kidnapped guys are still isolated (form the outside world),” David Sakvarelidze, a top member of Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces, wrote in the morning of Nov. 18. “There’s information that they were heavily beaten. The big amount of blood that we saw in (Shavshishvili’s) apartment is evidence for this. Probably that’s why they’re still hiding them and are not in a hurry to deport them… They are likely being held in inhuman conditions.”
Sakvarelidze added that he did not want to assume this but some of those kidnapped could have been killed, like journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000.
The plane that was supposed to transport the kidnapped associates of Saakashvili to Georgia has not landed there yet, and their whereabouts are still unknown, Yuriy Derevyanko, a top member of the Movement of New Forces, said on Facebook in the morning of Nov. 18.
The four Saakashvili associates are Tamaz Shavshishvili, a journalist for Georgia’s Rustavi 2 television station, security guard Zurab Tsintsadze, as well as Vano Nadiradze and Mamuka Abashidze, who fought Russian troops in the Donbas. Nadiradze, a veteran of the volunteer Donbas battalion, has taken part in protests against Poroshenko in front of the Verkhovna Rada.
The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, late on Nov. 17 indirectly admitted taking part in the events, saying that it had deported eight unnamed citizens of Georgia to their homeland jointly with the National Police, State Migration Service and State Border Guard. The SBU claimed that the Georgians’ activities are at odds with national security, without specifying what the alleged security threats were, and that the deportation was carried out according to the law.
However, the SBU did not name any of those deported, and it did not cite any documentary proof or court warrants for the deportation of the four Saakashvili associates. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible with a court warrant.
SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlianska on Nov. 18 refused to name the remaining four Georgians to the Kyiv Post, say whether they had landed in Georgia or whether there had been court warrants for the eight Georgians’ deportation.
As of the evening of Nov. 18, the SBU, the National Police, the Interior Ministry, the State Migration Service and the State Border Guard refused to comment on any of these issues to the Kyiv Post. It is still not clear where the kidnapped Saakashvili associates are located and whether they have been deported.
Moreover, the deportation of Nadiradze was explicitly banned by a court warrant, said Yuriy Derevyanko, a member of Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces. The Kyiv Post obtained a photo of the warrant.
A court warrant that bans the deportation of Vano Nadiradze.
The Interior Ministry named only four of those deported – Homeriki, Golandzia, Sheliya and Mikiladze, saying that they were mafia bosses. However, neither the SBU nor the Interior Ministry said who the other four were and did not name Shavlishvili, Tsintsadze, Abashidze and Nadiradze directly.
A Kyiv Post reporter was allowed to enter Shavshishvili’s apartment, from which he was kidnapped, when police officers were summoned there by his lawyers and acquaintances.
There were stains of blood on the floor and on a towel in the apartment, as well as a copy of a contract between Shavshvishvili and his lawyer Pavlo Bogomazov lying on the floor. There were signs that several doors in the apartment had been broken open.
Mykola Danchenko, a construction worker, told the Kyiv Post that masked camouflaged people had been there and detained someone. One of them showed him a government ID and gave him the key to Shavshishvili’s apartment for safekeeping.
Danchenko could not say which government agency the person belonged to.
The events were confirmed to the Kyiv Post by two more witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Meanwhile, Derevyanko posted video footage of unknown people kidnapping Nadiradze in a café on Institutska Street.
In a similar case, Georgy Rubashvili, one of Saakashvili’s former security guards; Saakashvili’s friend David Makishvili, who fought against Russian-separatist troops in the Donbas and trained Ukraine’s National Guard, and Saakashvili’s former driver Mikhail Abzianidze say they were kidnapped in Kyiv, beaten, and then illegally transported to Georgia without a court warrant by Ukrainian authorities on Oct. 21. The authorities deny accusations of wrongdoing.
One eyewitness of Makishvili’s alleged kidnapping told the Kyiv Post that one of the people who detained Makishvili presented himself as an employee of the State Security Department and showed a State Security Department ID.
The State Security Department, headed by Valery Heletei, provides security services to Poroshenko and other state agencies. The department could not immediately comment.
Another eyewitness told the Kyiv Post he had seen camouflaged men detaining Makishvili and pushing him into a blue Volkswagen Multivan with a European Union license plate.
The eyewitnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Abzianidze’s passport was stamped by the State Migration Service, which implies that a representative of the service was present during his expulsion from the country. The Kyiv Post obtained photos of the stamp.
State Migration Service spokesman Serhiy Hunko told the Kyiv Post that Rubashvili, Makishvili and Abzianidze had been ordered by the State Migration Service to leave Ukraine voluntarily, and there was no court warrant for their forced deportation by the Ukrainian authorities. Under Ukrainian law, a person can only be deported by force if there is a court warrant for this.
The State Migration Service has so far failed to provide any documents on the grounds for the cancellation of the Georgians’ residence permits, their expulsion or the travel ban, Pavlo Bogomazov, the Georgians’ lawyer, told the Kyiv Post.
Tzvi Arieli, an acquaintance of Makishvili, said on Oct. 24, citing his sources, that Makishvili, Rubashvili and Abzianidze had been kidnapped by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the National Guard and the Border Guard. Saakashvili has said that the National Police had also participated and the operation had been ordered by the Presidential Administration.
The SBU denied participation in the events, while Border Guard spokesman Oleh Slobodyan told the Kyiv Post that a Border Guard employee had been present when Rubashvili, Abzianidze and Makishvili left the country.
National Guard spokesman Vadym Holub told the Kyiv Post that “the National Guard is not involved in issues of deportation,” but refused to say whether National Guard members were present when the deportation of the three Georgians took place on Oct. 21 and whether a National Guard plane had been used.
The National Police and the Presidential Administration declined to comment.
Arieli also said the three Georgians had been transported by an An-74 plane on flight UR84170 from Kyiv’s Zhulyany Airport to Tbilisi on Oct 21. He added that the plane, which he says belongs to Ukraine’s National Guard, had likely been serviced by a Russian dispatcher, and its transponder had been turned off.
Ukraine’s State Air Navigation Agency confirmed to the Kyiv Post that flight UR84170 left Zhulyany Airport for Tbilisi on Oct. 21.
Arieli also published photographic evidence of Rubashvili’s alleged kidnapping.
The State Migration Service and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said on Oct. 24 that Saakashvili and 20 more Georgians could also be deported.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has so far refused to investigate the alleged kidnappings.
A photo of the National Guard’s An-74 plane that allegedly transported David Makishvili, Mikhail Abzianidze and Georgy Rubashvili to Georgia, according to Makishvili.
