The battle between two “old buddies” in Ukraine

“Russia is preparing for a massive war, but we don’t know where.” That’s how Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, has described Zapad 2017, the military exercises Russia is conducting over the border in Belarus. The last thing his fragile country needs, then, is a flare-up on another of its borders. Yet that is just what occurred, said Florian Hassel in Tages-anzeiger (Zurich), when the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, barged his way into Ukraine last week.

Saakashvili, who was a classmate of Poroshenko’s at the University of Kiev, made his name cleaning up corruption in Georgia. Hoping he could do the same in Ukraine, Poroshenko appointed him governor of the Odessa region in 2015. But after just 18 months, the Georgian threw in the towel, accusing Poroshenko of sabotaging his efforts for fear they might bring to light the president’s own corrupt dealings. To Poroshenko’s fury, Saakashvili, now a Ukrainian citizen, then set up his own political party. The president promptly revoked his “old buddy’s” citizenship and told him not to come back. But, in typically flamboyant style, Saakashvili made his return last week. Barred from entering by train from Poland, he staged a face-off against guards at a checkpoint. Burly supporters on the Ukraine side then burst through the cordon and carried him over the border. It’s the sort of “kitsch” affair one has now come to expect from Ukrainian politics, said Wieslaw Romanowski in Polityka (Warsaw). Saakashvili can’t achieve much on his own: he’s widely dismissed as a “political adventurer”. But he’s being used by opposition politicians, notably the former PM Yulia Tymoshenko. She accompanied him on his trip from Poland and is now calling for early elections. If this is the start of a new opposition alliance, it could make for a very “hot autumn”.

Poroshenko has himself to blame for all this, said Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg (New York). Why get a foreigner to reform the “corrupt, cronyist” administration, only to deny him support and then send him into exile? But the good news, said Anders Åslund on Carnegieeurope.eu (Brussels), is that “in one stroke, Saakashvili has put new life into Ukraine’s democracy”. His theatrical return could revitalise the opposition and civil society. “It’s a great new beginning.” On the contrary, said Stefan Meister on the same website: Poroshenko may be too much a part of the corrupt old system to be able to change it, but Saakashvili has become too much of a PR person to be a credible alternative. “Ukraine needs new people to return to the long, rocky path of reform. The fight between two men of the past only distracts from the real future needs of the country.”