Ex-Leader of Georgia Confronts Ukraine Agents in Rooftop Standoff<br />"This could happen to anybody who doesn’t cut a deal with them." Seeking to explain why Ukraine’s security agency, the S.B.U., had tried to grab the former Georgian leader, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, accused Mr. Saakashvili of assisting a criminal organization led by Mr. Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Russian president,<br />and receiving $500,000 to fund his political activities from a fugitive Ukrainian businessman, Serhiy Kurchenko.<br />The prosecutor’s accusation that Mr. Saakashvili was collaborating with Mr. Yanukovych seemed to be largely aimed at discrediting the former Georgian<br />leader, who has attracted support in Ukraine by positioning himself as an uncompromising enemy of Russia, corruption and Mr. Poroshenko.<br />Dragged from the roof after denouncing Mr. Poroshenko as a traitor and a thief, the former Georgian leader was detained<br />but then freed by his supporters, who, amid raucous scenes on the street, blocked a security service van before it could take Mr. Saakashvili to a Kiev detention center and allowed him to escape.<br />As a regional governor in Ukraine committed to fighting corruption, he clashed with just about<br />everybody, including his estranged former ally, Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko.<br />As president of Georgia for nearly a decade, Mr. Saakashvili initially won plaudits in Washington<br />and other Western capitals for rooting out corruption and turning his small nation into a rare success story among former Soviet lands.<br />Mr. Saakashvili’s return to Ukraine infuriated the government, raising political temperature as Mr. Poroshenko struggled with a Russian-backed armed rebellion in the eastern part of the country<br />and mounting criticism from political opponents that, like Mr. Yanukovych, he was tolerating and benefiting from rampant corruption.
