The Movement of New Forces party led by former Georgian President and Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili presented its top 10 candidates for parliament on June 13.
The announcement comes ahead of the July 21 snap parliamentary election.
According to the latest poll conducted by sociological research company Rating Group Ukraine, less than 0.6 percent of respondents who plan to vote and have chosen a party will favor New Forces.
“We brought together people who have a unique experience of a selfless heroic fight against the system of injustice and corruption,” Saakashvili said during a press briefing on Rybalsky Bridge in Kyiv.
The Movement of New Forces approved the list at a party convention held on June 10.
The top 10 list of the New Forces party includes:
1. Mikheil Saakashvili — president of Georgia in 2004-2013, governor of Odesa Oblast and adviser to former President Petro Poroshenko in 2015-2016. Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship in 2014 and stripped of it after running afoul of Poroshenko in 2017. He returned to Ukraine in May after President Volodymyr Zelensky restored his citizenship.
2. David Sakvarelidze — Ukrainian deputy prosecutor general and Odesa Oblast prosecutor in 2015-2016. Sakvarelidze was Georgia’s deputy prosecutor general in 2008-2012.
3. Oles Doniy — a lawmaker with the Our Ukraine–People’s Self-Defense Bloc, a party associated with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, in 2007-2012. Doniy was an independent lawmaker in 2012-2014.
4. Natalia Zhukova — a chess grandmaster and a two-time champion of Europe.
5. Volodymyr Lanovyi — Ukraine’s minister of economy in 1992 and a lawmaker in 1994-1998, 2006-2007, 2012.
6. Olena Terestchenko — a former Kyiv City Council lawmaker and the wife of Michel Terestchenko, the French-born mayor of Hlukhiv, a town in Sumy Oblast.
7. Dmytro Bulakh — a Kharkiv Oblast Council lawmaker with the Samopomich party and the founder of the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center non-profit.
8. Hanna Solomatina — a whistleblower from the National Agency for Preventing Corruption.
9. Oleg Mykhailyk — an anti-corruption activist who fights against illegal construction in Odesa. He was attacked and shot in 2018, which he believes was retribution for his activism.
10. Ihor Cherniak — a Kharkiv City Council independent lawmaker, deputy chairman of the board at the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center non-profit, and a member of the AutoMaidan anti-corruption group’s Kharkiv branch.
The full Movement of New Forces list includes over 100 candidates.
Previously, Saakashvili said that he has no interest in receiving a government job or running for parliament.
According to Ukrainian electoral law, a candidate for parliament has to live in the country during the last five years before running. Saakashvili’s lawyer, Pavlo Bogomazov, told the Kyiv Post that although Saakashvili wasn’t in Ukraine for around two years, he isn’t breaking the law, as he was “kidnapped” and removed from Ukrainian territory.
Poroshenko granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship in 2014. The former Georgian President served as the governor of Odesa Oblast in 2015-2016. After he fell out of favor with Petro Poroshenko, he was stripped of Ukrainian citizenship in July 2017 while traveling outside the country.
In September of that year, he forced his way into Ukraine through the Polish-Ukrainian border with the help of his supporters. In February 2018, Saakashvili was arrested in a Georgian restaurant in Kyiv and deported to Poland without a court warrant, raising questions over the legality of his forced expulsion.
