Another update from our news desk:
Ukrainian lawmakers have voted to call local elections on October 25.
But the bill passed on July 17 by the Verkhovna Rada said the elections would not be held in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in March 2014, or in rebel-held eastern districts.
The Kyiv government has had no control over parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions since fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatist rebels erupted there in April 2014. The conflict has since claimed more than 6,500 lives.
The rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk have said they would organize their own local elections in the areas they control this fall.
(AP, TASS, Interfax)
Our news desk has issued this item on Saakashvili's appointment of a Russian oppositionist as his deputy governor in Odesa:
The governor of Ukraine's Odesa region, Mikheil Saakashvili, has announced that Russian politician Maria Gaidar will be his deputy.
Saakashvili said on July 17 that he had asked Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to grant Gaidar Ukrainian citizenship and to formally appoint her to the post.
Saakashvili added that Gaidar will be supervising social issues in the region.
Gaidar is the daughter of the late Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s reformist prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
She is a vocal critic of Yeltsin's successor, President Vladimir Putin.
Saakashvili, who served as president of Georgia in 2004-2013, has been leading Ukraine’s Odesa region since late May.
Poroshenko's government has appointed several foreigners to state posts after antigovernment protests toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
(dumskaya.net, news.meta.ua)
