Translated material
Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili governor of Odessa region
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko officially introduced former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as the new governor of the Odessa region. Poroshenko also signed a decree granting Ukrainian citizenship to Saakashvili.
“I will watch everything that will happen on this earth with great attention,” the head of state said. Poroshenko is sure that in the near future it will be possible to see the prosperity of the Odessa region.
- Information about the possible appointment of Saakashvili as governor appeared the day before, on May 29. Formally, the government of Ukraine asked Saakashvili to appoint him. Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook that he loves Odessa and published the song "Scavs full of mullets."
- Mikheil Saakashvili was the President of Georgia in 2004-2007 and 2008-2013. After his resignation, he lived in New York for some time, and then came to Ukraine, where he became an informal adviser to Petro Poroshenko. In April, he turned down an offer to take the post of Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
- Several criminal cases have been opened against Saakashvili in Georgia. Georgia turned to Ukraine with a request to extradite him, but the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office refused.