The mayor of a mayor Ukrainian city has been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship after the country’s security agency said it had evidence he held a valid Russian passport.
Gennady Trukhanov has served as mayor of the southern port city of Odesa, which has been heavily bombarded by Moscow, since 2014. He denied the accusations and said he would appeal at the country’s top court.
Newsweek has reached out to the Ukrainian presidential office for comment.
Why It Matters
Ukrainian officials cannot hold Russian citizenship and several high-profile individuals have lost their Ukrainian citizenship since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. Ukrainian media reported the Ukrainian presidential office had also revoked the citizenship of two other people on Tuesday, identified as former lawmaker Oleh Tsariov and Serhii Polunin, a professional dancer.
What To Know
Trukhanov is a Russian citizen and has a valid foreign passport for the country, Kyiv’s SBU domestic security agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
Trukhanov received the passport in December 2015 and the document is valid for 10 years, the SBU said. Russia had annexed Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine, from Kyiv the previous year. Moscow had also backed separatists in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, collectively known as the Donbas. Moscow currently controls most of the Donbas after more than three and a half years of full-scale war. Odesa, further south, is Ukraine’s third largest city and has a long history of contact with Russia.
Trukhanov said in a statement he had never applied for Russian citizenship nor received a Russian passport and would take the decision to the country’s supreme court and beyond, to the European Court of Human Rights.
“All speculations regarding my alleged Russian citizenship are due to the fact that citizens of the former Soviet Union automatically acquired citizenship of the Russian Federation under certain circumstances,” Trukhanov said. “However, I did not have such circumstances!”
He has for years denied he has a Russian passport, including in the run-up to his election as Odesa mayor.
Trukhanov said he would continue to act as Odesa’s elected mayor until his powers are stripped by the city council.
The SBU shared what it said was an image of Trukhanov’s passport, showing his birth date in 1965 in the then-Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. A court in Moscow had canceled another passport held by Trukhanov in 2017, but this did not automatically repeal his citizenship, the Ukrainian agency said.
The decision to strip Trukhanov’s citizenship was approved by Zelensky, according to the SBU. Zelensky said in his evening address on Tuesday he would establish a city military administration in Odesa and appoint a new chief in the near future. He did not directly mention Trukhanov.
“Too many security issues in Odesa have remained without an adequate response for far too long,” the Ukrainian president said. “All effective decisions will be made.”
The case against Trukhanov “looks very strange,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, who serves as a member of Ukraine’s parliament, representing Odesa. Goncharenko said there are looming questions about how governance of Odesa will now work, and suggested the case could be politically motivated.
“Odesa will be governed by people whom the local population did not even elect,” Goncharenko told Newsweek.
Oleksii Potapskyi, from the country’s European Solidarity party, of which Goncharenko is also a member, told Ukrainian media on Tuesday the decision to revoke the mayor’s citizenship was part of a “political crackdown.”
The governor of the broader Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said on Tuesday Russia had launched attacks on critical infrastructure and was “trying to destabilize the situation from within.”
Ukrainian officials have said Russia is repeatedly attacking Kyiv’s energy sector as the country heads into the unforgiving winter season.
What People Are Saying
Trukhanov said on Tuesday: “I have never applied to the Russian Federation to obtain Russian citizenship. I have never received a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation. I am a citizen of Ukraine.”
Goncharenko told Newsweek: “Criminal cases have already been opened against [Trukhanov]. And if there are still questions about him, then we need to conduct an investigation, transfer the case to court. Let this court be open so that people can see what is happening, whether he is guilty or not guilty.”
What Happens Next
It’s not clear when Trukhanov will be removed from his position, and whether Ukrainian authorities would attempt to remove Trukhanov from the country.
