I am in Kyiv. In the heart of a city whose superhuman efforts allow life to go on. Friends and comrades are organizing, in secret, at the Zhovten, the most beautiful movie theater of the Podil quarter, the Ukrainian premiere of my film, Slava Ukraini. And, from Tbilisi, Georgia, on the far shore of the Black Sea, more than 1,500 kilometers away, a handwritten letter reaches me, in a trembling script, from Mikheil Saakashvili.
Saakashvili… Like a ghost rising from a recent past (2008!) that seems suddenly so far away… It was springtime. The winds of liberty blew over the Georgia where he was president. It was a wind of liberty and roses. I am there. I see, braving the Russian tanks on the doorstep of the capital, this gentle giant who, like the heroes of literature for children, has a princess to save, named either Georgia or Europe, no difference. He resists. Calls for aid. Seems, at times, poised for victory. Loses the election. Goes into exile in Ukraine, where he becomes governor of Odesa Oblast. Returns home. And finds himself thrown into jail by a power under orders from Putin who, not content to just put him away, seems to have poisoned him as well.
Read more at Time.