KIEV, September 8. /TASS/. State machinery in Ukraine is demoralized and the fact may open the road to a change of state power, believes former Georgian President turned Odessa region governor Mikhail Saakashvili.
"A big vacuum is emerging due to the weakness of state machinery and the forces of law and order maintenance," he said live on the air of ICTV television channel. "A dangerous situation is taking shape, as all the groups surfacing now and having nothing in common with true volunteers may get a temptation one day to say it’s they who are real power."
"A general loss of legitimacy of the political class is taking place," Saakashvili said. "It’s just enough to look at the returns from the most recent opinion polls, which show that practically the entire political class is sliding downhill."
Simultaneously, Saakashvili believes the events in the sub-Carpathian city of Mukachevo where the militants affiliated with the Right Sector ultra-far-right grouping staged an exchange of fire and the protests in front of the Verkhovna Rada building, in the course of which a fighter affiliated with one of the so-called ‘volunteer battalions’ hurled a hand grenade at the at the police cordoning the building off showed that the forces of law and order also fell short of coping with their functions.
Saakashvili has been leveling sharp criticism at the Ukrainian authorities of late, saying for instance the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk was inefficient, as the oligarchs had an overly big influence on its members.
Yatsenyuk said, on his part, Saakashvili’s words were libelous.
This was followed by a conflict between Saakashvili and oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Their reciprocal insults were circulated broadly by the media.