Eka Zguladze

Early life and education

Ekaterine Zguladze was born in Tbilisi, the capital of then-Soviet Georgia. She studied law at the Oklahoma State University and eventually graduated from the Tbilisi State University with a degree in international journalism.

In Georgia

Zguladze worked for several international organizations based in Tbilisi and, from 2004 to 2005, the United States foreign aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation – Georgia. At the invitation of the then-Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia, Ivane Merabishvili, Zguladze, then 27-year-old, became First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs in the administration of President Mikheil Saakashvili in May 2006. After Merabishvili's successor, Bachana Akhalaia, resigned in response to an inmate abuse scandal in Tbilisi's Gldani prison on 19 September 2012, Zguladze was appointed Acting Minister of Internal Affairs and served on this position until the opposition Georgian Dream coalition, victorious in the October parliamentary election, formed a new government on 25 October 2012.

During her tenures in the ministry, Zguladze helped carry out sweeping police reforms that earned praise in the West. She was also the ministry's spokesperson on a range of issues, including during negotiations with foreign diplomats, and briefed the media during the tense days of the August 2008 war with Russia. In a classified U.S. diplomatic dispatch from 2007 published by WikiLeaks, Zguladze was described as "a tireless bureaucrat… sharp, and sometimes slightly sharp-edged, knowledgeable and a fierce debater".

In Ukraine

On 17 December 2014, Zguladze was appointed as First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Earlier that month, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko granted her Ukrainian citizenship to make her eligible for the post. She is the second former Georgian official, after Alexander Kvitashvili, appointed to a Ukrainian government position in 2014. On her plans for police reform, she stated, "We're not producing cosmetic changes; we need to create a brand new system of law enforcement." On 5 July 2015, 2,000 new patrol police replaced Kyiv's old traffic police, completely overhauled with new western-inspired uniforms. In September 2015, Zguladze said, "I'm a firm believer that Western values, Western democracy, and Western aspirations are the way for Georgia … and for Ukraine."

Personal life

In addition to her native Georgian, Zguladze is fluent in Russian and English. Her second husband, whom she married in 2011, is the French journalist and film director Raphaël Glucksmann (born 1979), who is a son of the French philosopher and writer André Glucksmann and a former adviser to ex-President Saakashvili. The couple has a son born in 2011.