Enraged crowd swarms police, frees former Georgian president Saakashvili

Welcome toTheNational Today, which takes a closer look at what's happening around the day's most important stories. Sign up hereunder"Subscribe to The National's newsletter," and it will be delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.

A standoff in Ukraine

Once upon a time, Petro Poroshenko and Mikhail Saakashvili were friends.

They were student buddies at the Kiev Institute of International Relations in the late 1980s, then like-minded reformers, and finally political allies.

But those days are long over for the current president of Ukraine and the former leader of Georgia.

Which helps explain the extraordinary scene in Kiev today when Ukrainian police attempted to arrest the 49-year-old ex-president of Georgia at his downtown apartment. First, Saakashvili fled to the rooftop, where he addressed a crowd of supporters who had gathered in the street below. Then he was taken into custody at gunpoint and dragged away by masked law enforcement officers.

Police put him in the back of van, but Saakashvili's enraged partisans were having none of it. They battled through tear gas and pepper spray to spring him (watch the video).

After his liberation, Saakashvili led a march to the Ukrainian parliament, where he gave a speech denouncing Poroshenko as the "head of an organized crime organization."

It was only two years ago that Poroshenko welcomed Saakashvili to Ukraine with open arms, giving him citizenship and making him the governor of the southern Odessa region.

Back home in Georgia, where he served two terms as president after sweeping to power in the 2003 Rose Revolution, Saakashvili had gone from national hero to despised and distrusted heel. Although credited with anti-corruption reforms, his push to leave Russia's sphere of influence led to two brief wars and the loss of the now "independent" regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In Ukraine, Saakashvili and Poroshenko soon fell out over the pace and scope of reforms, and he resigned his governorship in 2016.

Since then, the feud between the two men has been on the boil.

Last summer, the president revoked his Ukrainian citizenship while Saakashvili was visiting the United States. (The move came a week or so after the ex-Georgian leader had declared his rival - the owner of a candy factory to be a "Chocolate Ass" on national television.)

Settling in Poland, Saakashvili declared his intent to start a new party in Ukraine, and "fully change the rules of politics."

Although in another interview, he told the CBC's As it Happens that he has no ambition to lead his adopted country.

"I'm certainly challenging many of [Poroshenko's] methods, but I don't think he's my personal adversary. I'm not willing to be president of Ukraine. But, certainly, I'll do my best together with other political leaders to change the entire political system and to change the political class."

Then in September he literally stormed the Ukrainian border, carried across the frontier from Poland by a crowd of "well-muscled" supporters.

There's an outstanding arrest warrantin Georgia for Saakashvili, where he faces corruption charges. (He says they are trumped up.)

And Poroshenko today accused his former friend of being in cahoots with Vladimir Putin, something Saakashvili hotly denies.

More drama is sure to follow.

California is burning

A giant wildfire is burning out of control along the coast north of Los Angeles, forcing almost 30,000 people from their homes.

The so-called "Thomas Fire" started along a popular hiking path around 6:30 pm Monday night, and by this morning had already consumed 182,000 hectares.

It has destroyed 150 structures so far, including a large apartment complex and a psychiatric hospital.

And it's just one of five wildfires currently burning around LA.

This has been the worst fire season in California history, with more than 10,000 buildings destroyed and 43 deathsmost in fierce blazes in the wine country outside San Francisco in October.

And the destruction is directly related to the weather. This summer was the hottest on record, adding extra danger to the late fall when the powerful Santa Ana winds appear.

Things are unlikely to get better soon. Today's forecast for Los Angeles calls for a high of 24 C and wind gusts of up to 112 kph. Then temperatures will remain in the high 20s, with no rain in sight.

The California wildfire season traditionally runs through the end of the year.

A venerable Olympic tradition

The International Olympic Committee is banning the Russian Olympic Committee from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, but will allow its athletes to compete under a neutral flag.

There's no shortage of evidence suggesting that the Kremlin was directing efforts to cheat at London 2012, and at home in Sochi two years later.

But those anticipating a bolder response from the IOC's 14-member executive board like a ban on Russian participation are surely disappointed.

They shouldn't be. The same people were faced with the same choice and much of the same proof in the runup to Rio 18 months ago. And they opted to punt then too, downloading the decision to the sporting federations.

In the end approximately 70 per cent of the 387 Russian athletes who were originally named to Team Russia were permitted to compete in Brazil.

There is, of course, a case against collective punishment, as made by world champion figure skater Evgenia Medvedeva who addressed the board today. (To date, no figure skaters have been implicated in the doping program.)

And regardless of how much or how little the IOC punishes Russia, one thing is clear. It will have little effect on the long-term future of the Games.

Boycotts and bans have been around almost as long as the modern Olympics, with the Grand Duchy of Finland being the first country (OK, then a semi-autonomous outpost of the Russian Empire) to be prohibited from displaying the national flag in London in 1908.

The Germans were banned from two summer Games following the First World War. And when the Nazis hosted in Berlin in 1936, Spain's leftist government chose to stay away.

Seven countries boycotted Melbourne in 1956, for three different reasons: Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon over the Suez Crisis; the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland over the Soviet invasion of Hungary;and the People's Republic of China because Taiwan was there.

Apartheid-era South Africa was banned from Olympic competition starting in 1964, and Rhodesia joined it on the sidelines eight years later.

The Games in Montreal, Moscow, Los Angeles and Seoul all went off well short of full international participation, thanks to politically motivated boycotts.

And athletes have been doping as long as the Olympics have been handing out medals. Thomas Hicks, an American favourite in the marathon at the 1904 St. Louis Games, was given a mixture of strychnine, brandy and egg whites when he flagged near the finish. His trainers ended up carrying him over the line, but he still won gold.

The first doping disqualification? That dishonour goes to Swedish modern pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, who tested positive for alcohol at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. He claimed he drank two beers to "steady his nerves" before the pistol shooting event, although lab tests pegged his blood alcohol level at 0.081 per cent enough to lose his driver's licence. (It cost Sweden a team bronze.)

The world kept watching and cheering through it all.

Quote of the moment

"With the benefit of hindsight, intelligence was misinterpreted in 2017."

- The conclusion of an independent report into the deadly bombing in Manchester, U.K., that killed 22 people last May. The suicide attacker, Salman Abedi, should have been stopped by authorities when he returned from Libya and placed under greater scrutiny, it says.

What The National is reading

• Canadian-won Victoria Cross up for sale, could leave country. (CBC)
• U.S. hospitals find asthma hotspots are more profitable to neglect than fix. (Washington Post)
• Restorers find 240-year-old time capsule letter -- in a very odd place. (National Geographic)
• God's plan for Mike Pence. (The Atlantic)
• How airports allocate valuable landing and take-off spots. (The Economist)
• It's high time to bury Time magazine's 'Person of the Year.' (Daily Beast)
• You can 'hear' this GIF, and it's breaking our brains. (Digg)

Today in history

Dec. 5, 1970: Kidnapped British diplomat back in England after October Crisis

Two days after James Cross was released by the FLQ, he looks back on his 60 days in captivity.

1970: FLQ frees diplomat James Cross after October Crisis

54 years ago

Duration 10:15

Suspected FLQ kidnappers are on their way to Cuba, and James Cross, back in England, talks to the press about his ordeal.