In his inaugural speech, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy invited Ukrainians living abroad to return to their historic homeland. As someone who did this in 2015, I feel that some of that experience could be instructive for the new generation of reformers and the expats wishing to return.

In May 2015 President Petro Poroshenko sent his friend Mikheil Saakashvili to see if he could sort out the country’s largest and most corrupt oblast, Odesa. Shortly after, I accepted an invitation by Saakashvili to join him. By the time we all got together in the lovely Black Sea port city of 1 million people, we had an interesting mix of several Georgian cabinet reformers, several international technocrats, and a number of Ukrainian volunteers and expats.