Daughter of ex-Russian PM, defying Kremlin, eyes top post in key Ukraine region

Opposition activist Maria Gaidar (L) applauds fellow opposition leader Garry Kasparov outside his house after his release from jail in Moscow November 29, 2007. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor

KIEV (Reuters) - The daughter of a former Russian prime minister on Monday defended her decision to assume a top post in a key Ukrainian region, describing Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea as amoral and denouncing "Soviet-style banditry".

Maria Gaidar, whose father Yegor was Russia's first reformist prime minister after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, was appointed last Friday to be deputy governor of Ukraine's southern Odessa region, a political hotspot now led by former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.