Mikheil Saakashvili
Biography of Mikheil Saakashvili
Date of birth: 21.12.1967
Mikheil Nikolaevich Saakashvili - Georgian and Ukrainian politician, lawyer. President of Georgia (2004-2007 and 2008-2013), chairman of the United National Movement party, one of the leaders of the Rose Revolution. Head of the Odessa Regional State Administration, advisor to the Ukrainian President (2015-2016). Head of the Executive Committee of the National Council for Reforms of Ukraine (2020-2021).
Place of birth. Education. He was born in Tbilisi. In 1984, he graduated from high school with a gold medal. In 1992, he graduated with honors from the Faculty of International Law at the Kyiv Institute of International Relations. He studied on a scholarship from the US Congress at Columbia University (New York) and earned a Master's degree in law in 1994.
In 1995, Mikheil Saakashvili defended his doctoral dissertation at George Washington University (Washington, D.C.). He studied at the Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, at the European Law Academy in Florence and at the Hague Academy of International Law.
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Career. He worked at the Norwegian Institute for Human Rights in Oslo, at the New York law firm Patterson and the companies Belknap, Webb & Tyler. The latter specialized in the legal support of oil and gas projects in the CIS countries.
In 1995, he returned to Georgia at the invitation of his friend Surab Zhvania. He was elected to the Parliament as a member of the Citizen's Union of Georgia party, which supported then-President Eduard Shevardnadze, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR from 1985 to 1990 and was a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1996, Saakashvili became the chair of the parliamentary committee on constitutional and legal issues. In August 1998, he was appointed head of the pro-presidential faction of the Citizen's Union of Georgia.
In 1999, he was re-elected to Parliament. From January 2000, he was Georgia's representative to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In October of the same year, he was appointed Minister of Justice of Georgia. In 2001, Mikheil Saakashvili became a Member of Parliament, and a year later he became Chairman of the Tbilisi City Assembly.
In the elections on January 4, 2004, he was elected President of Georgia. 96.27% of voters supported Mikheil Saakashvili.
In the extraordinary presidential elections on January 1, 2008, he was re-elected as head of state.
On November 17, 2013, Mikheil Saakashvili was succeeded as President of Georgia by Giorgi Margvelashvili.
On February 13, 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed Mikheil Saakashvili as his extraordinary advisor and signed a decree establishing the International Advisory Council for Reforms, which was chaired by the former President of Georgia.
On May 29, President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree granting Ukrainian citizenship to Mikheil Saakashvili as a 'person whose naturalization in Ukraine is in the state’s interest'.
The next day, on May 30, President Petro Poroshenko appointed Mikheil Saakashvili as Governor of the Odessa regional administration and dismissed Igor Palitsa from this position.
On November 7, 2016, Mikheil Saakashvili resigned as head of the Odessa regional administration. On November 9, President Petro Poroshenko accepted his resignation and simultaneously dismissed Saakashvili from his position as advisor. On November 11, Saakashvili announced the establishment of his own political force and intended to demand early elections to the Verkhovna Rada.
On July 26, 2017, Petro Poroshenko revoked Mikheil Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship based on the recommendations of the citizenship commission. According to privacy laws, the corresponding decree will not be published, 'as it contains confidential information, including personal data'.
On May 28, 2019, President Volodymyr Zelensky amended a decree of the fifth President Petro Poroshenko and restored citizenship to former governor of the Odessa region Mikheil Saakashvili.
From May 7, 2020, to 2021, he was the head of the Executive Committee of the National Council for Reforms of Ukraine.
Views and assessments. As Minister of Justice of Georgia, he tried to introduce mandatory drug testing for officials, and he publicly had himself tested for drugs. He advocated for the confiscation of assets from officials who could not prove the legality of the origin.
He resigned from his position as Minister of Justice amid a scandal, accusing President Shevardnadze and government members of corruption. After that, he founded the opposition political organization United National Movement, which later evolved into the Unified National Party (Chairman - Mikheil Saakashvili).
In November 2003, protest actions organized by Saakashvili's party along with Zhvania and the parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze forced Shevardnadze to resign. The events of those days became known as the Rose Revolution. Saakashvili became one of its heroes and benefited from his popularity.