If Ukraine's central bank chief needed any more incentive to quit, last week she woke up to find the image of a pig draped in a Russian flag spray-painted onto the wall of her house and a gaggle of young protesters calling her a Russian stooge.
After a sustained hate campaign that also included a coffin laid at her door, Valeria Gontareva finally quit on Monday.
Her departure, with no obvious candidate for a successor, leaves President Petro Poroshenko with one fewer ally in power at a time when lenders keeping Ukraine afloat already question his ability to follow through on promised reforms.
Gontareva's bloody-mindedness in enacting tough anti-crisis measures attracted many enemies while winning praise from investors and the International Monetary Fund, which props up the country with $17.5 billion bailout.
The appearance that Poroshenko could not shield Gontareva, his former business partner, from being hounded out of office may make it harder to replace her. The president will struggle to find someone willing to step into her "kamikaze" role, said Oleksander Kirsh, a lawmaker with the People's Front, which is in coalition with Poroshenko's bloc.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-politics-analysis-idUSKBN17C0RG
