Former Georgian president blames corrupt officials and lack of political will for reforms for his resignation

Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has resigned as governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region, citing corrupt officials and a lack of political will for reform in the country’s leadership.

Saakashvili staged his resignation on Monday by calling an outdoor press conference and pouring vitriol on the man who appointed him, President Petro Poroshenko.



“What difference for Ukrainians does it make who will treat them like dirt: Poroshenko or Yanukovych; what difference who will steal from them?” asked Saakashvili, referencing Viktor Yanukovych, the disgraced former president ousted in the Maidan revolution in 2014.

The fiery Georgian Saakashvili was always a risky appointment for Poroshenko, who tossed him into Odessa like a hand grenade in the hope he would take on the president’s enemies and provide a rare success in Ukraine’s battle against corruption. That gamble has not paid off.

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Saakashvili accused Poroshenko of not making good on promises to back a number of reform projects in the Odessa region. “He has not moved a finger to make this project work,” he said. “I just want to ask: how much can you lie and cheat?”

Poroshenko has been widely accused of not backing up his vows to usher in a new era of politics with any concrete reforms.

Poroshenko’s press service said in a statement: “If the cabinet will submit Saakashvili’s resignation to the president, he will accept this resignation. The issue of why Mr Saakashvili filed his resignation will be reviewed in an appropriate manner.”

Saakashvili, who studied in Kiev in the 1980s and speaks some Ukrainian, took Ukrainian citizenship to take up the Odessa role last spring. In his resignation speech, he hinted that he would stay involved in the country’s politics, something that will alarm Poroshenko.

“I have decided to resign and start a new stage of the battle. I will not get tired, just let them hope for that, and just let them try to get rid of me,” he said. The 48-year-old remains one of the few politicians in the country with a positive approval rating.

President of Georgia for nearly a decade after leading the rose revolution of 2003, Saakashvili had little support by the time he left office, with critics accusing him of autocratic tendencies and leading the country into a disastrous war with Russia in 2008.



He is now wanted in Georgia on criminal charges, which he denies and which his supporters say are politically motivated. Even those who despise him grudgingly credit him with transforming the country and removing low-level corruption as a fact of everyday life.

Saakashvili is known for being impulsive and can frustrate many of those he works with, even those who admire his reforming energy and zeal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Poroshenko and Saakashvili last May. Photograph: Mykola Lazarenko/AP

Signs of tension between him and other Ukrainian politicians have been there all along. At a cabinet meeting last December, Saakashvili and the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, got into a heated argument that ended with Avakov throwing a glass of water at Saakashvili, who retorted that Avakov was a “thief” who would go to prison. Avakov later described Saakashvili as a “bonkers populist”.

In May, Saakashvili told the Guardian that the government was “a bunch of mediocre people” and challenged Poroshenko to see through his reform agenda.

Recent wealth and property declarations, made mandatory for Ukrainian officials, have shown again how different the lives of the country’s political elite are from those of its largely impoverished population, as well as its underfunded army, which is fighting a demoralising war with Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country.

While ostensibly a step forward for transparency, the declarations showed that many Ukrainian politicians had millions of dollars in cash, luxury cars and watches, vast wine collections, and in one case even a personal church.

“I will do everything it takes until we win full victory to free Ukraine from this scum, from this corrupt dirt which is capitalising on the blood of our soldiers and the victims of Maidan, and which has betrayed the ideas of the Ukrainian revolution,” said Saakashvili.