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FORMER Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, who was appointed governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region last year, threw in the sponge yesterday.
He asserted that he was resigning in frustration at what he described as obstruction of his efforts to root out corruption.
Mr Saakashvili accused President Petro Poroshenko, who handed him the Odessa job in May 2015, of supporting criminal clans in Odessa.
He announced his resignation in a video posted on his Facebook page, saying that he felt “cheated and tired.”
“We are witnessing retrograde forces attacking everything progressive. We are seeing all new beginnings being nipped in the bud,” he declared.
President Poroshenko has made Ukraine’s integration with the European Union a priority, but endemic corruption throughout the country impedes that policy.
Mr Saakashvili was a divisive figure in his Georgian homeland, alienating the electorate and leaving the country when his party lost the 2012 parliamentary election.
He was stripped of Georgian citizenship after becoming Odessa governor.
