For analysts familiar with the people who have accompanied Yanukovych into the corridors of power, however, there is an unmistakeable feeling of deja vous harking back to the days of former Urkainian President Leonid Kuchma when those around him benefited the most from a very non-transparent gas trade and other business activities. “We could be seeing a throwback to the Kuchma era where the current government seeks to cut deals with all neighbors in an effort to keep everyone happy while its members continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation’s welfare”, said Soukup. Russians have reason to look to the Georgian police for inspiration and as a blueprint for comprehensive reform. According to Kommersant, only 22% of Russians trust their police, a force which is considered by the public as corrupt and inefficient. In his recent article published on April 4, Stephen Sestanovich, an influential Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations wrote on the merits of Georgia’s police transformation and advised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to follow suit. “Only one political leader in any post-Soviet state has ever attempted this kind of institutional upheaval, and the comparison is an ironic one for Medvedev. For that leader is … Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, who soon after becoming president in 2004 fired more than 80% of the country’s police officers…But however awkward the parallel may be, there are lessons in it for Medvedev. Saakashvili’s reform succeeded precisely because it was so radical.” Let’s imagine that Georgia had had a Putin-appointed minister of internal affairs. Not only would that have meant the lack of even basic internal sovereignty, but would also have ruled out the possibility of any reform. That is how sovereignty and modernization are intertwined in Georgian reality and that is why Putin so vigorously opposes both.