After 24 years of independence and two revolutions, the promise of reforms that would turn Ukraine from a kleptocracy enabled by Soviet-era institutions into, say, Poland still hasn't materialized. Popular patience is wearing thin.
So three months ago, President Petro Poroshenko sent his friend (and Russia's bete noire) Mikheil Saakashvili to see if he could sort out the country's largest and most corrupt region, Odessa. Instead, the former Georgian president and his team of young reformers are gunning to sort out the whole country.
For the last several weeks, half of his time in Odessa, the man Saakashvili picked to run his reform program — former Microsoft executive Sasha Borovik — has been putting together a package of legislative changes designed to reproduce Georgia's essentially libertarian formula.
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