Georgian authorities pardoned Odessa yachtsmen sentenced to 4 years in prison for illegal border crossing

Ukrainian citizens Yuri Khomich and Vladimir Dyachenko, sentenced in Georgia to four years in prison on charges of illegally crossing the Georgian state border, were pardoned and released on Monday morning, said ex-president of Georgia, the chairman of the executive committee of the National Council of Reforms of Ukraine, founder of the Georgian opposition party “United National Movement”, ex-head of the Odessa Regional State Administration Mikheil Saakashvili. 

“Today at 7 am they (the Georgian authorities) were forced to release two Ukrainians and a Georgian, who were sentenced to four years in prison only three days ago on an absolutely trumped-up charge of violating the state border,” Saakashvili wrote on Facebook, specifying that the freed Georgian citizen is Ukrainian by origin, ex-officer of the State Security Service of Georgia Mikhail Baturin. 

According to the politician, this act was made under pressure from the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, “who showed a principled position and canceled the Georgia-Ukraine bilateral summit, and also made it clear that he would not take part in another summit under the auspices of the European Union, which was scheduled for the next day and in which Maia Sandu was also to take part”.

“According to my information, President Zelensky’s plane took off only after the message about the release of the Ukrainians arrived, and the president waited until the last minute until this message was confirmed by the Ukrainian embassy in Kiev, only after that he gave the go-ahead to take off,” Saakashvili wrote …

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