KIEV, June 27. /TASS/. Former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, who now heads the Ukrainian Executive Committee on Reforms, said at a meeting with Ukrainian business people via a video call on Saturday that Russia was ahead of Ukraine in terms of economic reforms and deregulation of the economy.

"Russia has lots of things we are trying to amend in Ukraine, and they are solved [in Russia] much more quickly and more successfully than here," Saakashvili said quoted by the Ukrainian publication Observer.

"Russia has gone far ahead of Ukraine in deregulation," Saakashvili said. "And in the tax system, they [in Russia] are far ahead. Actually, they [authorities] listen to business much more than we do."

"They [the Russians] are defeating us on the front of reforms," he believes.

Earlier, Mikhail Saakashvili said that the state has ceased to exist in Ukraine after being replaced with officials pursuing their own interests, not those of the state.