Ukraine crisis: 'Putin is obsessed with the idea of testing Nato' - and the Baltics will be next, says Odessa governor Mikheil Saakashvili
At first sight it seemed an improbable appointment: a man who had served twice as president of neighbouring Georgia, parachuted in as governor of a single region of Ukraine. But for the government in Kiev, beset in the east by pro-Russian rebels, and facing entrenched corruption and an array of powerful oligarchs elsewhere, it was an obvious choice.
Two months later, Mikheil Saakashvili, exiled from the country he once ran, is settling into his new role as governor of Odessa – not just the Black Sea port city with its population of one million, but the wider and strategically crucial region around it.
He has embarked on a string of dramatic reforms on whose success, he believes, the future of the region, with its large Russian speaking and perhaps Moscow leaning minority, depends. And he will be reminding anyone who will listen that among the greatest threats, not just to Ukraine but to a wide swathe of eastern Europe, is the Russian president, Vladmir Putin.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-crisis-putin-is-obsessed-with-the-idea-of-testing-nato--and-the-baltics-will-be-next-says-odessa-governor-mikheil-saakashvili-10403298.html
Topic: Ukraine crisis: 'Putin is obsessed with the idea of testing Nato' (Read 173 times)
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