ODESA, Ukraine -- Former Georgian President and ex-Governor of Ukraine's Odessa region Mikheil Saakashvili has called on supporters to rally in Kyiv on October 17 to "defeat evil."
Saakashvili made the comments at a rally in the Black Sea city of Odesa on September 30 upon returning to the port for the first time since he resigned as governor in November 2016.
He told a small gathering of supporters that the Kyiv demonstration would call for the creation of anticorruption courts, the abolition of parliamentary immunity, and a revamping of the country's electoral legislation.
Saakashvili lost his Georgian citizenship in 2015 when he accepted Ukrainian citizenship and the post of Odesa governor.
In July, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship, an order that Saakashvili plans to contest in court.
On September 22, a court in Lviv convicted Saakashvili of illegally entering the country on September 10 and fined him about $130, plus a $12 court fee.
At a rally of supporters in the western city of Chernivtsi on September 13, Saakashvili said he had returned to Ukraine "to resolve the main issue: how to get out of the political crisis that currently exists in the country."
