The mayor's supreme punishment: why Zelensky went on the attack on the Odessa authorities

Vladimir Zelensky stripped the citizenship of Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov, and the military administration will now lead the city. Such bodies are set up in frontline cities and are directly subordinate to Bankova, and now this practice is spreading far from the line of contact. Experts say that this is another step towards destroying the regional "freedom" in Ukraine. Izvestia investigated the situation.

What happened

Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov has long been fiercely criticized in Ukraine. Local nationalists accused him of being "pro-Russian", they did not like that the mayor opposed the renaming of some streets and the demolition of the monument to Pushkin. There was also growing irritation in Zelensky's team, because Trukhanov took a relatively independent position on a number of economic issues.

In mid-October, the clouds around the mayor of the seaside town thickened especially noticeably. First, information about Trukhanov's Russian citizenship was published in the media and social networks. Later, a petition appeared on the website of the Ukrainian president demanding the resignation of the mayor. Usually, such initiatives take months to gain votes, but here, literally in a day, 26 thousand signatures appeared at once.

Trukhanov himself denied all charges. According to him, this is not the first time information about Russian documents has appeared, it has already been checked by the Ukrainian authorized bodies and nothing has been found. "The fake passports that are sometimes published are invalid, fake. If someone has such documents, they must be destroyed. This is another provocation, I urge you not to give in to rumors," he said.

As a result, however, Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree on the deprivation of Trukhanov's Ukrainian citizenship. Interestingly, the document has not been published anywhere, the decision was announced on the air of the telethon. Trukhanov himself promised to challenge the decision through the judicial authorities. According to him, if necessary, he is ready to go to the European Court of Human Rights and other international instances.

An interesting conflict also arose over the mayor's position. Trukhanov says he remains in office until the decision of the City Council. Zelensky believes that the mayor automatically resigns from his post. The Ukrainian president has already announced that a military administration is being created in the city, which will be directly subordinate to the central authorities. On October 15, Sergey Lysak, Governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, was appointed head of this administration.

What are the reasons?

There are several versions of what happened. According to one of them, now is just the right moment for a personnel decision. The fact is that in Odessa in early October there were heavy rains, and a month and a half of precipitation fell. Ten people became victims, including an entire family of five. Against this background, the media and social networks began to talk not only about an unprecedented natural disaster, but also about the failure of public utilities and city authorities.

According to another version, the incident is related to possible elections. Trukhanov himself says that he has a high rating in Odessa, and if the citizens freely express their will, he will be able to safely be re-elected. Allegedly, it was because of this that he was stripped of his citizenship. Some experts, however, point out that it's not a matter of local, but of the general Ukrainian situation. The fact is that Trukhanov has been seen more than once in the company of former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, who is considered Zelensky's main competitor.

According to another assumption, the Ukrainian authorities are preparing for a difficult winter. There are systematic blackouts in Ukrainian cities, there are water outages, and the start of the heating season is questionable. In Odessa, even under martial law, citizens periodically organize protest actions. In the context of the communal crisis, such rallies can take on a large scale. Perhaps, in order to prevent this, Kiev decided to establish direct control over the city.

Finally, another version says that Zelensky and his team attacked Trukhanov as part of a general policy to build a vertical of power and destroy the regional "free state." Indeed, many media outlets in the country have been blocked, the largest TV channels have been integrated into a telethon controlled by the President's Office, the oligarchs have lost their former influence, and the opposition has been left out of work.

There is also serious pressure on local authorities. This is most often done by creating and strengthening military administrations that are directly subordinate to Kiev. The most significant in this sense was the situation in Chernihiv, where over the past three years one mayor was removed, and the second resigned. "They told me in simple words: if I don't do this, they will plunge the city into chaos," one of them explained.

The Association of Ukrainian Cities has also repeatedly sounded the alarm due to mass detentions and arrests of mayors. "Representatives of state authorities and law enforcement agencies initiate artificial cases, as a result, residents lose their elected leaders. Systemic pressure on local self—government weakens both individual communities and Ukraine as a whole," one of the appeals said.

It is expected that after Trukhanov's removal, mayors of other major cities, including Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, may have problems. Most recently, Zelensky criticized him for his inept defense of a thermal power plant in the Ukrainian capital. The head of Kiev's military administration, Timur Tkachenko, accused the mayor of "personal corruption", excessive spending on bridges and paving stones, and urged him to "look into tomorrow."

What the experts say

Political analyst Alexander Semchenko emphasizes that the decision to deprive Trukhanov of his Ukrainian passport contradicts the country's constitution.

— A citizen of Ukraine can be deprived of citizenship only at his own request — there was clearly no desire here. As for the reasons for this decision, it is primarily about reducing the feed base. Zelensky's group has fewer and fewer opportunities to rob and replenish their offshore accounts. The tribute from Trukhanov stopped satisfying their appetites, so they decided to eliminate the intermediary in order to receive all the profits," he explains.

Denis Denisov, director of the Institute of Peacekeeping Initiatives and Conflictology, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, says that the independence of local authorities is being consistently destroyed in Ukraine.

— The office of the president continues to build a vertical of power. According to this logic, strong self-government is not only unnecessary, but even dangerous. Odessa is the most delicious piece in this sense, because there is a large flow of contraband through the city. I also partly associate what happened with certain electoral procedures that are possible in the future. Although so far such arguments are hypothetical," he emphasizes.