During university, he served his shortened military service in 1989–1990 with the Soviet Border Troops' checkpoint unit in the Boryspil Airport in Ukraine (then as Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, also a part of the Soviet Union). Saakashvili graduated from the Institute of International Relations (Department of International Law) of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (in then independent Ukraine) in 1992. At this university, he was friends with later President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. While in Ukraine Saakashvili participated in the October 1990 student protest known as the "Revolution on Granite".