A year after my Atlantic Council blog post on Mikheil Saakashvili’s first fifty days as Odesa oblast governor, it’s time to reexamine his record. The results are mixed: his brisk and spectacular first wins soon hit the skids. The Presidential Administration’s promised support evaporated in late 2015 and Saakashvili’s many initiatives were skillfully torpedoed at every corner. Today Saakashvili is essentially locked in a stalemate against his local adversaries and has reached the ceiling of his reform deliverables. In short, Saakashvili’s time in Odesa is a microcosm painfully illustrating Ukraine’s thorny path to democracy.On the surface, Odesa looks like a …read more
Source: Atlantic Council
