Particularly since the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as regional governor in May 2015, the Black Sea port of Odessa has become an epicentre of Ukraine’s campaign for political and economic reform. In this public lecture, Professor Volodymyr Dubovyk (Director of the Centre for International Studies, I. Mechnikov National University, Odessa, Ukraine) positions Odessa as a prism through which to analyse Ukraine’s experience of revolution and war and its ongoing struggle with corruption.