Three weeks ago, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa province, with a dual mission: to jump-start reforms based on his experience in reforming Georgia, and to consolidate Ukrainian control in a territory potentially targeted by Russia. Saakashvilli’s Odesa mission entails launching reforms in one of Ukraine’s most impoverished and most mal-administered provinces, overturning that status quo, without, however, triggering a backlash from vested interests that could destabilize the province and facilitate Russian interference. The Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv needs some demonstrable, early successes on reforms in Odesa to be emulated in …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation
