From RFE/RL's news desk:
Saakashvili Says He Plans To Return To Ukraine Next Month
Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and ex-governor of Ukraine's Odesa region who was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship in July, says he plans to return to Kyiv next month.
"I am returning to Ukraine. I will arrive on September 10 travelling from Poland through the Krakovets checkpoint [in the Lviv region]," he said in a live broadcast on Facebook on August 16.
President Petro Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship on July 26, a move the former Georgian president condemned as an "illegal way to move me from the political scene in Ukraine."
The 49-year-old Saakashvili, who served two terms as president from 2004 to 2013, is an adamantly pro-Western reformist who came to power in Georgia as a result of the peaceful Rose Revolution protests of 2003.
But his popularity declined in his later years in office, in part because of the 2008 five-day war with Russia during which Moscow's forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country.
Saakashvili was stripped of his Georgian citizenship in 2015 after he took Ukrainian citizenship in order to become governor of the Odesa region.
Georgia is seeking Saakashvili's extradition to face charges related to the violent dispersal of protesters and a raid on a private television station.
He says those charges are politically motivated.
Saakashvili resigned as Odesa's governor in November 2016 -- complaining of official obstruction of anticorruption efforts, accusing Poroshenko of dishonesty, and charging that the central government was sabotaging crucial reforms.
Now, without Ukrainian citizenship, Saakashvili cannot seek political office in Ukraine, where his party is calling for early parliamentary elections. However, he said in the Facebook broadcast that he has been travelling on his Ukrainian passport.
Ukraine is scheduled to conduct its next presidential election in March 2019.
'Holy, Mighty, United!' The Ukrainian Children Trained For War
More than 10,000 people have been killed since the Ukraine war began, but people on both sides are already training the next generation to fight -- at special military summer camps for kids. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
An item from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
Poroshenko Orders Probe Into North Korea Missile Claims
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says he has ordered an "urgent, thorough, and full investigation" into a media report alleging that North Korea may have purchased rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory.
Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on August 16 that the probe will be led by the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
The investigation will include the participation of the interagency commission for military-technical cooperation policy and export control, as well as state-run missile factory Yuzhmash, Poroshenko wrote, with a report on the results due within three days.
The announcement comes two days after a report in The New York Times, citing an analysis by a missile expert and classified assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies, said that "North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines, probably from a Ukrainian factory."
Ukrainian officials have already denied the story.