The appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as governor of the Odessa region is not a joke at all. And certainly not an isolated event - a whole landing of the authors of Georgian reforms, probably the most successful in the world in recent decades, landed in Ukraine.

Photo: Nikolay Lazarenko, Kommersant / buy photo

VLADIMIR FEDORIN, author of the book "The Road to Freedom. Conversations with Kakha Bendukidze"

The legacy of Deribas, Richelieu and Vorontsov hangs like a bag on Odessa, like a father’s suit on a frail teenager. My hometown experienced three demographic catastrophes in the 20th century, and the risk of another is more than real. For Odessa, Saakashvili’s business trip is a chance, for the first time in a century and a half, to receive a leader commensurate with its plans. At the same time, this is the clearest confirmation that the Ukrainian leadership is becoming increasingly aware of the threat. And the relevance of the Georgian experience for preventing disaster in the country as a whole.

The Georgian landing in Ukraine was dictated by the most banal of reasons. The country is experiencing a severe shortage of personnel, and the scale of the problems it faces - war, economic crisis, state failure - requires radical and quick solutions. And if a year ago Georgian advisers were perceived by the majority of Ukrainian politicians as dreamers and extremists, today it has begun to dawn on many that the Georgians were not deceiving when they said that if there were no reforms, there would be no Ukraine.

Kakha Bendukidze, a co-author of the Georgian liberal revolution who died in November 2014, remarked a year ago: “I have never in my life seen such an unreformed country as Ukraine.” Bendukidze has seen a lot: two waves of Russian reforms - in the 1990s and early 2000s (in the second he was directly involved as the author of the law on currency regulation and co-author of tax reform), reforms in Georgia in the mid-2000s, Rwanda, Albania, Honduras , Guatemala - in the 2010s.

The results of not carrying out reforms are obvious. In 2015, Ukraine will become the poorest country in Europe with a per capita GDP of $2004 (IMF forecast). Ukraine is the most corrupt (according to Transparency International) and the most economically unfree country in Europe (according to the Heritage Foundation).

“Do you know how many military commissars there are in Ukraine?” Bendukidze was indignant. “20 thousand! And these 20 thousand commissars called up 30 thousand people for the last wave of mobilization.” According to Bendukidze, in Georgia a small department, located in one office, was responsible for mobilization. (“It’s not true,” one of the leaders of the Ukrainian state recently told me. “We have only 13 thousand military commissars.”) Be that as it may, the military commissar of Odessa became the first official caught taking a bribe under Saakashvili.

What attracts Georgian reformers to Kyiv? Their main reason is that Ukraine is a natural ally of Georgia in the struggle for independence. If Ukraine survives, Georgia will also survive. Another factor should not be written off: in today’s Georgia, Saakashvili’s associates are, at a minimum, out of work, and at a maximum, subject to criminal prosecution. Ukraine is the most suitable place to apply knowledge and skills that are not in demand at home. We must not forget that the disgraced reformers are in the prime of their lives, on average they are in their early forties.

For Saakashvili’s team, Ukrainian politics is a minefield. How to pass through it unharmed? Recently, on a plane, I met Eka Zguladze, the first deputy minister of internal affairs. One of the most powerful security officials in Ukraine was flying, like me, in economy class. Zguladze is fighting grassroots corruption - creating a non-corrupt patrol service that will replace the traffic police. The idea looks almost hopeless: well, will you create a pure teaching staff, and how long will it last like this, surrounded on all sides by unreformed units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and squeezed from above by corrupt courts?

Georgian reformers understand this well, but the principle that guides them is to get involved in the struggle, and then we will see. This tactic is fraught with losses. Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili, it seems, will not emerge victorious from his fight. Dzhambul Ebanoidze, invited to reform the Registration Service, was defeated without even starting work - the service was liquidated, offering him in return to head the department of the same name, but without authority. One of the main fighters against corruption in Georgia, ex-Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General Zurab Adeishvili, was supposed to take the place of prosecutor of the Odessa region, but at the last moment this agreement was “replayed.”

Last fall, Bendukidze was almost seriously offered to receive a Ukrainian passport and head one of the economic departments. The key word in this sentence is “almost”: Bendukidze did not accept this pitch; there was a slight shade of frivolity in it. But now the time for jokes is over: President Poroshenko is ready to rely on Georgian allies. Radical reforms are just around the corner.

Why does Ukraine need Georgian reformers?