Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin has said that the West considers the detention of the leader of the New Forces Movement party, ex-head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, ex-President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, an internal affair of Ukraine.

"... This is Ukrainian business: go about your business, but do it within the legal field. It's very simple, but you will not hear any official unusual reaction, because they [Europe] understand how this should be done. And always, when we say that we have a European society, a European country, it implies that we have the rule of law. It's very simple," Klimkin told reporters in Kyiv on Saturday, commenting on the situation around Saakashvili.

As reported, Saakashvili was detained late on Friday, December 8. The case on Saakashvili was opened pursuant to Part 2 of Article 256 of the Criminal Code (assistance to participants of criminal organizations and concealment of their criminal activity), which envisages from five to ten years of imprisonment.

Saakashvili is placed in temporary detention facility of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv. He announced an indefinite hunger strike.