KIEV: Ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s nascent but ambitious career in Ukraine got off to an inauspicious start Wednesday when his candidate for mayor of Odessa was beaten badly in the historic port.

The 47-year-old foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin was voted out of office in ex-Soviet Georgia after losing a brief but disastrous 2008 war with Kremlin forces that saw the tiny Caucasus nation lose disputed territories to Moscow’s control.

But Saakashvili was a prominent member of three months of winter protests from 2013-14 that ultimately swept a Moscow-backed leadership from power and appeared to set the former Soviet republic on its current westward course.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko rewarded Saakashvili in May by unexpectedly appointing him as governor of Odessa, a Black Sea region that remains under firm government control and enjoys a rich cultural history as well as a thriving port.