Ukraine's Odessa region deputy governor Maria Gaidar files to renounce Russian citizenship

KIEV, August 7. /TASS/. Odessa Deputy Governor Maria Gaidar has filed an application to renounce her Russian citizenship, she told a television channel in Odessa, Ukraine.

"I know that Ukraine has no opportunity for double citizenship so I am ready to renounce. I have already applied," Gaidar told a presenter, replying to questions about citizenship regulations.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on August 4 granting Gaidar Ukrainian citizenship and passport.

Russian lawmaker warns Maria Gaidar may be pawn to sacrifice in Ukraine

Russian lawmaker Frants Klintsevich said Maria Gaidar is destined to be a pawn to be sacrificed.

"Having written an application to waive Russian citizenship, Maria Gaidar is risking to find herself in utter isolation at some point. Through her folly and being driven by political ambition, she plunged into somebody else’s game where she is seen as a pawn to be sacrificed," Klintsevich, the first deputy leader of the United Russia faction in the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, told journalists. "It is absolutely clear that should this girl have some other name, she would have never been appointed to that post in Odessa."

"To call things by their proper names, Maria Gaidar’s ‘well-wishers’ in Ukraine are speculating on her name and this smells rotten," he said, adding that one might have different attitudes to her father and grandfather, Yegor and Arkady Gaidars, but "there is no doubts they left their mark in Russian history."

Maria Gaidar was appointed deputy governor of Ukraine's Odessa region in mid-July by Georgian ex-president and the current governor of the Odessa region, Mikheil Saakashvili.

According to Saakashvili, Maria Gaidar will be responsible for the social sphere. "She is an economist, she studied at the Academy of National Economy in Moscow and at Harvard University," he said.

"I knew her father Yegor Gaidar and respected him a lot. She moved to Odessa and will work at our administration. And we appeal to the Ukrainian president to grant her the Ukrainian citizenship," the Odessa region governor said back then.

Gaidar is the daughter of the late Egor Gaidar, a member of the government formed by Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin.

Maria Gaidar represents the so-called "non-systemic opposition" in Russia. She is the former vice-governor of Russia’s Kirov region. 

Gaidar is an active participant in a number of liberal pro-Western movements in Russia. In 2011, she studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.