Prosecutor’s General Office wants to deprive Zhvania of Ukrainian citizenship

David Zhvania, one of ideologists of the Orange Revolution, may be deprived of the Ukrainian citizenship. Prosecutor General of Ukraine Oleksander Medvedko turned to court, demanding to cancel the decision, which allowed Zhvania to receive a Ukrainian passport in 1999, according to Ukrayinska Pravda.

These processes were initiated by deputy President’s Chief of Staff Ihor Pukshyn.

Last Saturday, on May 17, Medvedko submitted an application to the Svyatoshynskiy district court of Kyiv, demanding to revise Zhvania’s Ukrainian citizenship, considering new conditions.

Medvedko asks to cancel the ruling of the Radyanskiy district court of Kyiv, which allowed Zhvania to become a Ukrainian citizen in 1999. According to Medvedko, “Zhvania turned to the Radyanskiy court in 1999, referring to the fact that he had been living in Ukraine for almost 10 years by that time, and asked to confirm his Ukrainian citizenship. He needed to legally confirm the fact of his uninterrupted living in Ukraine since the year 1991. The Radyanskiy court issued ruling on September 30, 1999, allowing the application of Zhvania”, Medvedko noted.

According to him, this ruling must be cancelled due to new evidence that has been discovered recently.

“Zhvania first received the certificate for a foreigner living in Ukraine on October 2, 1997. Besides, on 16 September 1998 he received another certificate for living in Ukraine on the basis of his own statement, in which he wrote that he had arrived in Ukraine for the first time in 1996”, Medvedko said.

The Prosecutor General also produced an evidence, which, in his opinion, confirms that Zhvania lived at the territory of Georgia. This is a document, a copy of an agreement on exchanging apartments, which was concluded between Ukrainian citizen Tyshchenko, living in Kyiv at Bohdana Khmelnytskoho street, and citizen Zhvania, living in Georgia, Tbilisi, in Saburtalinskaya street.

If Zhvania looses the status of a Ukrainian citizen, it may theoretically call in question his status of a member of Ukrainian parliament.

Commenting on this fact to UP, Zhvania called these actions a revenge of the Presidential Secretariat. “This is done because there is no secret that I head the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense HQ at the Kyiv Council elections. It was announced at the last meeting with the President that we should enter a coalition with Chernovetskiy, but we will never agree to do that. That is why, at present, the task of Yushchenko is not to allow his own political force to receive enough votes in the Kyiv Council”, Zhvania noted.