KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili was deported to Poland on Monday, the Ukrainian border service said, after he was detained in a Kiev restaurant by law enforcement agents in camouflage.

Poland’s border service confirmed that he had arrived and that Warsaw had agreed to let him enter.

The deportation appears to bring an abrupt end to a months-long cat-and-mouse game between Saakashvili and the Ukrainian authorities, which saw street unrest during previous attempts to arrest him. Some critics, including in the opposition, said his movement distracted from the broader opposition’s campaign to hold the Kiev leadership to account.

“This person was on Ukrainian territory illegally and therefore, in compliance with all legal procedures, he was returned to the country from where he arrived,” border service spokesman Oleh Slobodyan said in a post on Facebook.

“This is not a president and not a man. This is a lowlife crook who wants to wreck Ukraine. All this shows how weak they are. We will of necessity defeat them.”

Saakashvili, who served as president of his native Georgia for most of the period from 2004-2013, was invited to Ukraine by Poroshenko, who took power after protests toppled a pro-Russian leader in 2014. He held a regional governorship from 2015-2016 before falling out with Poroshenko and joining the opposition.

Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship last year, but Saakashvili re-entered Ukraine anyway from Poland in September, promising to confront the president, whom he accuses of corruption, which Poroshenko denies.

Slobodyan said law enforcement officials were obliged to use force while detaining Saakashvili in Kiev as his supporters had attacked them.

A video posted on Saakashvili’s official Facebook page showed several armed men in green military uniforms approaching a man lying on the floor of a restaurant.

“Such actions should not have been carried out against Saakashvili, but unfortunately they were,” his spokeswoman said by telephone. She said Saakashvili’s supporters would gather outside the presidential administration in Kiev at 1630 GMT to protest against his treatment.

But there was no immediate sign of public outcry, unlike in December when police tried to arrest Saakashvili but he escaped custody during street protests.

Saakashvili is wanted in Georgia on embezzlement charges that he says are politically motivated. He says he has given up his Georgian citizenship.

Saakashvili also faces criminal charges in Ukraine. The authorities accuse him of assisting a criminal organisation, which he calls a fabricated allegation to undermine his campaign to unseat Poroshenko.</s>KIEV, Ukraine — Opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine to Poland on Monday after being detained by armed, masked men at a restaurant in Kiev and rushed to the airport, Ukrainian officials and his supporters said.

Ukraine's border guard agency had to use force to counter Saakashvili's supporters at the Kiev airport, Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the agency, said on Facebook.

Saakashvili was stripped of Ukrainian citizenship while he was abroad last year, but he forced his way back into the country from Poland in September. Since then, he has led repeated protests against Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the official corruption that still plagues the country.

Poland's border guards said on the agency's website that Saakashvili was admitted to Polish territory Monday at the request of Ukrainian immigration authorities.

He was permitted into Poland as the spouse of a European Union citizen, the Polish guards said. Saakashvili's wife is Dutch, and both the Netherlands and Poland are EU nations.

Upon his arrival in Poland, Saakashvili said his deportation showed Poroshenko's weakness. He denounced the Ukrainian president as a "sneaky speculator who wants to destroy Ukraine" in a Facebook statement.

Saakashvili, Georgia's president from 2004-13, came to Ukraine after his presidency ended as an ally of Poroshenko, who appointed him governor of the southern Odessa region. He resigned from that post in 2016 and harshly criticized Poroshenko for failing to stem corruption.

"I was very nicely met by Polish side, and Ukrainian side was absolutely outrageous, total lawlessness — it was a kidnapping, illegal one. But Poles are very good and I am very grateful," Saakashvili told Polish Radio RMF FM as he left Warsaw Airport.</s>Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's former president who turned to opposition politics in Ukraine, has been making international headlines over the past months with a string of dramatic scenes of unrest.

Last September, he used a crowd of supporters to barge past guards to enter Ukraine from the Polish border, to protest against the Ukrainian government's decision to strip him of his Ukrainian citizenship.

In December, Saakashvili climbed on the roof of a building in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, as armed police stormed his apartment. After he was dragged down by the security forces and bundled into a police van, a group of supporters rushed to his aid, ripping off the doors of the vehicle to allow his escape.

The latest dramatic episode came on Monday, when a large group of men in military uniforms dragged him out of a restaurant and deported him to Poland. Saakashvili called the move "kidnapping".

Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship in 2015 by President Petro Poroshenko, who made him governor of Ukraine's Odessa region.

Poroshenko said Saakashvili would help Ukraine battle corruption, citing his success of all but eradicating it in Georgia during his presidency there from 2004 to 2013.

But a year later, Saakashvili resigned and called for Poroshenko's removal, accusing the Ukrainian president of protecting corrupt Ukrainians.

The president reacted by stripping his former ally of his citizenship in July 2017, turning him into a stateless person, since Saakashvili lost his Georgian citizenship to accept the Ukrainian one.

The development gave him more notoriety, boosting his voice against the Ukrainian leader.

The Ukrainian government had three choices in dealing with Saakashvili: an arrest, deportation to Georgia, or exile in Poland.

Ukrainian prosecutors accuse Saakashvili of having assisted a criminal organisation - a charge that is widely seen as trumped up.

Security services said he received financing from a "criminal group" linked to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

The Ukrainian government refrained from arresting Saakashvili to avoid turning the former Georgian politician into a cause celebre, and to avoid international condemnation for holding a political prisoner.

The second option would have had a similar effect, since Saakashvili faces prison in Georgia for what he calls politically-motivated charges over abuse of presidential office with his pardon powers.

Saakashvili believes that the Georgian government asked Ukraine not to extradite him to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. "The Georgian government is afraid of me," he told Ukraine's News One broadcaster.

Exile in Poland would hardly stop Saakashvili from campaigning against Poroshenko, but it seems to have been considered the least damaging for Ukraine's image.

He crossed the border into Ukraine without a passport from Poland, so it seemed logical to return him to the country.

Shortly after his deportation on Monday, Saakashvili told his supporters through a phone comment to News One that he would "fight to the end" against Poroshenko's government.

"I am with you and I will fight to the end. To their end and to our victory," he said. He also said that he was not claiming asylum in Poland.

On Tuesday, Saakashvili appealed for help to the European Union and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In an interview with German publication Bild, he described the deportation as kidnapping.

"If the European Union and especially Chancellor Angela Merkel don't finally do something ... Ukraine will break apart," he said, directly accusing Poroshenko of ordering the operation against him.

Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, said on Twitter: "Depriving Saakashvili of his only citizenship was a clear violation of his human rights. Forcibly deporting him makes things even worse."

Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian journalist and member of parliament, said the move was "the worst example of selective justice", adding that Poroshenko "shot himself in the foot".

Georgia's Defence Minister Levan Izoria supported Ukraine's move, saying: "When there are facts indicating breach of law, one must face justice [even if he is a former president]."

Al Jazeera talked to Saakashvili recently about his standoff with Poroshenko. The interview can be viewed below.</s>Mikheil Saakashvili, a Ukrainian opposition leader and a former president of Georgia, says he has been kidnapped in Kiev and sent to Poland. Security footage showed Saakashvili being dragged from a restaurant by men in military uniforms.

It later emerged this was a government operation to deport him.

Saakashvili was a marked man in Ukraine for rallying against President Petro Poroshenko.</s>Ukrainian authorities have deported Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president who has emerged as a vocal antagonist of the government in Kiev. Ukraine's border agency confirmed his deportation to Poland on Monday, while videos on social media purported to show Saakashvili getting seized by masked men.

"This person was on Ukrainian territory illegally," the agency said in a statement released Monday, "and therefore, in compliance with all legal procedures, he was returned to the country from which he arrived."

Representatives of Saakashvili are describing the incident in starkly different terms.

Earlier Monday the populist politician's Facebook account released a plea for help, saying "unknown people in masks kidnapped [him] and drove him in an unknown direction." At the same time, the account uploaded several videos appearing to show his "abduction" in a restaurant at the hands of several shouting men.

Hours later, he called reporters from Warsaw with his account of the confrontation: "They broke into the cafe," he said. "They tried to close my eyes, tie my hands."

Within hours he had been placed on a plane to Poland.

Saakashvili and his supporters have cast the move as an attempt to remove a prominent threat to President Petro Poroshenko, a former ally who granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship and even appointed him governor several years ago — only to strip him of that citizenship after Saakashvili quit amid a flurry of accusations that Poroshenko was blocking his attempts at reform.

Saakashvili — a populist politician who also faces a three-year prison sentence in Georgia for embezzlement and abuse of authority during his presidency there — lost his rights as a Ukrainian last summer while he was in the U.S. He returned, though, gathering supporters on the Poland-Ukraine border for a climactic push back into the country in September. Since then he has drawn a considerable following in Ukraine, even as Ukrainian officials have condemned him as a provocateur backed by a pro-Russian criminal group.

Earlier this month Saakashvili lost his appeal for protection against the possibility of getting extradited to Georgia to stand charges.

"The Georgian authorities never asked for my extradition when I was in America or in Europe," the 50-year-old opposition leader told The Guardian last week, when he was still living and working in central Kiev. "They only did it when I returned to Ukraine because Poroshenko asked them to."

Now, after grappling with Saakashvili for months, Kiev has managed to eject him. Time will tell whether he will stay out of Ukraine or whether, as he did last year, he will somehow manage to return. In the meantime, Saakashvili might be out of the country — but he is not exactly out of earshot.

"This is not a president and not a man," he said of Poroshenko in a statement after the deportation Monday, according to Reuters. "This is a lowlife crook who wants to wreck Ukraine. All this shows how weak they are. We will of necessity defeat them."</s>Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili vowed Monday to "fight till the end" after Ukraine deported him to Poland following a falling-out with Ukraine's leader Petro Poroshenko.

Saakashvili, 50, is accused of trying to stage a coup sponsored by Russia in Ukraine, where he has led rallies calling for Poroshenko's ouster, accusing him of failing to fight corruption.

The former Georgian president had obtained Ukrainian nationality which was revoked last year.

On Monday, Ukraine's border guard service said he had been residing in Ukraine "illegally" and was thus sent back to Poland.

"I love Poland but my fight is in Ukraine and Georgia, and I'll fight till the end," Saakashvili said in a video interview from Warsaw, posted on Twitter by a journalist from Poland's commercial radio station RMF FM.

"We'll be fine. We will win that battle."

Earlier on Monday Saakashvili, the former governor of Ukraine's Odessa region, was detained by masked men at a restaurant in central Kiev, a witness told AFP.

His supporters went to Kiev's two airports in a vain effort to prevent his deportation.

Saakashvili's opposition party said in a statement that his lawyer "filed a petition on the kidnapping of the politician" to the police.

A few hours later his close ally David Sakvarelidze wrote on Facebook that Saakashvili had been deported to Poland and was in Warsaw.

"I was very nicely met by (the) Polish side and (the) Ukrainian side was absolutely outrageous, totally lawless," Saakashvili said in the Polish video interview, which shows him getting into a car at a Warsaw airport.

"It was a kidnapping, illegal one. But Poles are very good and I'm very grateful to them," he said in English.

Around 150 of Saakashvili's supporters gathered in front of Poroshenko's office in Kiev late Monday to protest his deportation.

They chanted "Poroshenko must resign!" and held up banners that read "Poroshenko, let Saakashvili go free!"

The operation that saw Saakashvili's arrest was led by border guards, police and state migration officials who had to "use force," the Ukrainian border guards said in their statement.

Saakashvili had already been briefly detained twice in December in Kiev before being released.

Ukrainian authorities accused him of wanting to "seize power by force" during recent demonstrations.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office said those rallies were funded by allies of former president Viktor Yanukovych.

A pariah of the Kremlin after Georgia fought a short war with Russia in 2008, Saakashvili was a vocal champion of a popular uprising in Kiev that toppled Yanukovych's Moscow-backed government in 2014.

Poroshenko rewarded Saakashvili for his efforts by appointing him governor of the strategic Black Sea region of Odessa in 2015 before the two men fell out.

Saakashvili is also wanted in his native Georgia for alleged abuse of power.</s>KIEV, Ukraine — Opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine to Poland on Monday after being detained by armed, masked men at a restaurant in Kiev and rushed to the airport, Ukrainian officials and his supporters said.

Ukraine's border guard agency had to use force to counter Saakashvili's supporters at the Kiev airport, Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the agency, said on Facebook.

Saakashvili was stripped of Ukrainian citizenship while he was abroad last year, but he forced his way back into the country from Poland in September. Since then, he has led repeated protests against Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the official corruption that still plagues the country.

Poland's border guards said on the agency's website that Saakashvili was admitted to Polish territory Monday at the request of Ukrainian immigration authorities.

He was permitted into Poland as the spouse of a European Union citizen, the Polish guards said. Saakashvili's wife is Dutch, and both the Netherlands and Poland are EU nations.

Upon his arrival in Poland, Saakashvili said his deportation showed Poroshenko's weakness. He denounced the Ukrainian president as a "sneaky speculator who wants to destroy Ukraine" in a Facebook statement.

Saakashvili, Georgia's president from 2004-13, came to Ukraine after his presidency ended as an ally of Poroshenko, who appointed him governor of the southern Odessa region. He resigned from that post in 2016 and harshly criticized Poroshenko for failing to stem corruption.

"I was very nicely met by Polish side, and Ukrainian side was absolutely outrageous, total lawlessness — it was a kidnapping, illegal one. But Poles are very good and I am very grateful," Saakashvili told Polish Radio RMF FM as he left Warsaw Airport.</s>Welcome to The National Today newsletter, which takes a closer look at what's happening around some of the day's most notable stories. Sign up here and it will be delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.
• Mikhail Saakashvili lashes out at Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in fiery press conference in Warsaw this morning following Monday's forced deportation from Kiev
• Donald Trump's new fiscal blueprint for America includes a $4.4 trillion US budget and years of trillion-dollar deficits

Mikhail Saakashvili is gone from Ukraine, but he is unwilling to be forgotten.

The former president of Georgia, who became an ally and then a foe of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, gave a fiery press conference in Warsaw, Poland, this morning following his forced deportation from Kiev yesterday.

"Poroshenko believes that he has beaten off the opponent whom he is fearful of the most. He falsified a case against me and threw me out of the country," said the 50-year-old opposition leader.

"We will wring the neck of the Ukrainian oligarchy. They will be sent to prison, where they belong. I promise this."

The falling out between Saakashvili and Poroshenko, once university chums and then political admirers who bonded over their mutual mistrust of Russia, is operatic in scale.

Living in exile in the United States after his 2012 electoral defeat, and facing corruption charges at home, Saakashvili accepted his old friend's offer to become governor of Odessa in early 2015.

In the months that followed, Ukraine denied Georgia's attempts to extradite Saakashvili and even granted him citizenship.

But relations between the two leaders quickly soured. Saakashvili resigned from his job in late 2016 and started his own anti-corruption political party, the Movement of New Forces.

Last summer, Poroshenko stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship while he was outside the country. In September Saakashvili stormed back across the border with Poland, carried by a crowd of supporters.

For months, he and members of his party have staged almost daily demonstrations outside of Ukraine's parliament calling for Poroshenko's ouster.

An initial attempt to deport Saakashvili last December was foiled by angry protesters who gathered outside of his Kiev apartment and pulled him from a police van.

But yesterday, Ukrainian authorities had the element of surprise when they descended on the opposition leader while he was eating lunch in a Georgian restaurant. CCTV footage shows helmeted riot police placing a bag over Saakashvili's head and hustling him out of the building.

An hour later, he was aboard a chartered jet on its way to Warsaw.

Saakashvili, who is now technically stateless, having given up his Georgian citizenship in 2015, says the fight is not over.

Addressing Ukraine's "idiots" at today's press conference, he vowed to recover his passport and head back to Kiev.

"I will be almost as efficient in Europe over the next few weeks as I used to be in Ukraine," he said, and then switched into the third person.

"Saakashvili at liberty is more dangerous for Poroshenko than Saakashvili whom they persecuted in Ukraine. We will peacefully oust the oligarchs from power."

At her first Olympics 12 years ago in Turin, Alex Gough finished in 20th place in luge.

At Whistler in 2010, the home track failed to be much of an advantage and she came 18th.

Sochi 2014 severely tried her spirit, offering up fourths in women's singles — 0.433 seconds off the podium — and in the team luge event.

Today in Pyeongchang, the 30-year-old Calgarian finally delivered on the dream, winning a bronze — Canada's first-ever Olympic luge medal.

Gough long ago cemented her place in sliding, becoming the first Canadian to win gold on the World Cup circuit back in 2011, one of her 25 career medals.

But the Olympics weren't just frustrating, they were cruel.

This past December, Gough and the other members of Canada's squad for the Sochi team event — Sam Edney, Justin Snith and Tristan Walker — were told that they had indeed triumphed in 2012, upgraded to bronze because two Russian sliders had been caught doping.

But their much-delayed medal never materialized, because the Court of Arbitration in Sports overturned the Russians' lifetime ban just days before the Pyeongchang Games began.

For a time today it looked like history might repeat itself. Gough's fourth and final run was less than perfect, opening the door for the final two sliders to knock her off the podium.

Several minutes of despair followed. Then some faint hope. And finally, all-out jubilation as the final times came in and she took bronze.

"I'm elated — just so over the moon," Gough told reporters. "Especially to come from that gut-wrenching feeling of being behind and probably in a fourth spot again. To have that flip around on me and be suddenly in a medal spot is so amazing."

Calgary's Kimberley McRae came fifth — the same spot she found herself in at Sochi 2014.

Gough, who is already halfway through her engineering studies at the University of Calgary, says she will likely retire following Thursday's team event.

Her bronze was one of three medals for Canada this morning, joining a gold in mixed doubles curling for Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris, and Kim Boutin's third-place finish in women's 500 metre short track speed skating.

All propelling the country to some lofty Olympic heights.

Follow all the results and get a full broadcast schedule at CBC's online Olympic hub.

Tonight on The National, Diana Swain reports on how South Korea has become one of the world's most wired societies and how that's affecting its culture. The National can be found at its regular time on CBC News Network, as well as streamed on YouTube and Facebook, for the duration of the Games.
• None Enjoying this newsletter? You may also like our early-morning newsletter, the Morning Brief. Start the day with the news you need in one quick and concise read. Sign up here.

Donald Trump unveiled his fiscal blueprint for America yesterday — a $4.4 trillion US budget and years of trillion-dollar deficits.

The U.S. president's spending proposals for the coming fiscal year include $200 billion in new money for infrastructure, $18 billion for his border wall for Mexico, and a 13 per cent hike in funding for the military.

All of this would be partially paid for through deep reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and foreign aid, and $554 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years.

But the gap between what Trump would like to spend, and what the U.S. government is taking in, can't be papered over.

His projected deficit for the financial year ending in September 2019 is $984 billion. That's before almost $100 billion in emergency disaster relief, and a new Congressional deal to increase spending by $300 billion, is taken into account.

Meaning that Trump's actual deficit could come close to the record $1.4 trillion racked up by Barack Obama at the height of the 2008-09 global fiscal crisis.

Meanwhile, the tax cuts enacted by Republicans last December will slash revenue by an estimated $1.5 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (Trump prefers a much higher figure — branding it as a $5.5 trillion tax cut in an early January speech, and citing a $3.7 trillion reduction in his budget proposal.)

The projected end result will be at least $7.2 trillion in budget shortfalls between now and 2028.

Will any of it matter?

The reality is that the United States has only run in the black a dozen times over the past 77 years. And it has happened just four times since 1970, all under Bill Clinton.

It was only last fall that Trump was boasting about having reduced America's ballooning national debt. And while that was true over the first months of his presidency, the already mind-boggling number has started rising again since the tax cuts. It now stands at $20.5 trillion — a half trillion more than when Trump took office.

The U.S. has by far the world's largest debt, but also its biggest economy. The American debt-to-GDP ratio places the country in the bottom half of the world's 20 most-indebted nations, well behind fellow G7 members Japan and Italy.

By any measurement, the numbers are now so big as to be effectively incomprehensible:
• stack of a trillion $1 bills would rise 109,000 kilometres, a little more than a quarter of the way to the moon.
• None Placed end-to-end, the $1 bills would stretch past the sun, 156 million kilometres away.
• website has tried to create a visualization of the U.S. debt by surrounding the Statue of Liberty with towering currency skyscrapers.

President Trump, who personally owes at least $316 million to banks in the U.S. and Germany, according to his latest fiscal disclosure forms, might just describe the figures as "huge."

Quote of the moment

"As bad as y'all think Trump is, you would be worried about Pence. We would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became President, that's all I'm saying. He's extreme."

- Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former White House aide and four-time-fired Trump employee, to her housemates on last night's episode of Celebrity Big Brother.

What The National is reading
• None Sears pensioners seek missing money by going after billions paid in dividends ( CBC)
• None U.S. strikes in Syria killed scores of Russian mercenaries: Report ( Bloomberg)
• None Iceland will use more electricity mining bitcoins than powering its homes in 2018 ( Quartz)
• None Stratford woman ticketed for driving with parrot on shoulder ( CBC)

Feb. 13, 1996: Ernie Coombs reflects on his career as Mr. Dressup

On the eve of taping his final episode, Mr. Dressup reflects on 30 years of entertaining children on the CBC. "I had never realized what taping the last show would be like," he says. "Very, very emotional." The 'tickle trunk' ended up in the CBC Museum, and the iconic program continued on in reruns for another decade.

Sign up here and have The National Today newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.</s>Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian opposition figure and former Georgian president, has vowed to push ahead with his struggle against Ukraine's leadership. Speaking to Current Time in Warsaw on February 13, Saakashvili blamed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for his deportation to Poland and said the main response will come "from the people of Ukraine."</s>WARSAW, Poland — Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili says he will continue to rally people against the nation's authorities from abroad, following his deportation from the country.

Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine to Poland on Monday after being detained by armed, masked men at a restaurant in Kiev and rushed to the airport.

At a news conference in Warsaw Tuesday he described the deportation as having taken place by force and against international laws.

He vowed to continue rallying Ukrainians against the nation's authorities, saying they are corrupt. He said he will find a way to return to Ukraine, insisting it is his country.

Saakashvili was Georgia's president from 2004-13, and later was given a high position in Ukraine by then-ally President Petro Poroshenko. He has since criticized Poroshenko for failing to stem corruption.
Mikheil Saakashvili, leader of the opposition Movement of New Forces party, who has been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko on 26 July 2017, is detained by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kiev and deported from Ukraine to Poland.