THOUSANDS of supporters of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili rallied in Kiev yesterday demanding that Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko be impeached.

Crowds yelled “down with the gang!” and “impeachment!”

They were joined by neonazi thugs of the Right Sector movement which played an instrumental role in the Maidan street protests that brought down the Viktor Yanukovych government in 2014.

One protester, Valery Shapovalov, said an oligarch like Mr Poroshenko (a chocolate billionaire) would never fight corruption: “Bees can’t oppose honey,” he said.

Mr Saakashvili was arrested on Friday on charges that he is seeking to overthrow the government with assistance from “businessmen tied to Russia.” His lawyer says he is on hunger strike in protest against his detention.

After losing Georgia’s 2013 election Mr Saakashvili moved to the United States, and he is wanted by the Georgian authorities on corruption charges he says are politically motivated. He then moved to Ukraine, where Mr Poroshenko granted him citizenship and the governorship of Odessa, where 43 trade unionists were burned to death by on May 2 2014 by Maidan supporters.

Nobody has been held to account for the atrocity and the snail-pace investigation into it ground to a halt on his watch.

He resigned as governor at the end of 2016 and set up a new political party to challenge Mr Poroshenko, but has since been stripped of his citizenship (leaving him stateless as Georgia has also disowned him).

He re-entered Ukraine in September without permission, which itself can carry a sentence of up to three years behind bars.