Oleg Sukhov: Reformer and anti-reformer of the week

By Oleg Sukhov.

Published May 12, 2016 at 11:43 pm

Ekaterina Zguladze-Glucksmann (left) and Oleksandr Hranovsky

Photo by courtesy

First Deputy Interior Minister Ekaterina Zguladze-Glucksmann resigned on May 11.She did not say why, but her departure comes amid ongoing sabotage of police reform by courts and the Interior Ministry. Zguladze oversaw Georgia’s efforts to cleanse the police from corrupt officials as a deputy interior minister and interior minister in 2005 to 2012.

In December 2014, she was appointed as first deputy interior minister of Ukraine to bring the same kinds of changes here and was later joined by two other Georgian-born police reformers, Khatia Dekanoidze and Grigory Grigalashvili. Grigalashvili also resigned last month.

One of Zguladze’s reforms was the replacement of corrupt Soviet traffic police with Western-style police patrols.

Oleksandr Hranovsky

Oleksandr Hranovsky is an influential lawmaker from the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko.

Another parliamentarian from the bloc, Sergii Leshchenko, has accused Hranovsky of interfering with the Prosecutor General’s Office to fabricate criminal cases.

Last week investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap published a photo in which Hranovsky is talking to Serhiy Lysenko, a prosecutor suspected of large-scale corruption and persecuting EuroMaidan protesters. Lysenko was fired last year after photos of his text messages with threats to lawyers were published, but was reinstated last month.

Hranovsky is believed to be the right-hand man to Ihor Kononenko, Poroshenko’s “grey cardinal” in parliament, and is suspected of large-scale corruption and seizing the Skymall shopping center in Kyiv. He denies the accusations.