According to Odesa outlet Dumska, a presidential commission ruled on 13 October to strip Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov of Ukrainian citizenship over allegations that he holds a Russian passport. Once President Zelenskyy signs the decree, Trukhanov’s 11-year tenure ends automatically.
What makes this remarkable isn’t the citizenship question—it’s that corruption charges involving far more money never removed him from power.
For anyone wondering why a Ukrainian mayor matters beyond Ukraine’s borders: Trukhanov has governed Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea port, while parking millions in luxury London real estate and maintaining ties to organized crime figures from Odesa’s notorious 1990s “oil mafia.” His removal marks a shift in how Ukraine handles officials with Russian connections during wartime—tolerated for years, intolerable now.
The citizenship question that wouldn’t die
Russian passport allegations have followed Trukhanov since 2014. The 2016 Panama Papers suggested he held Russian citizenship. In 2019, a Russian court ruled a passport issued in his name was invalid—though Ukrainian security services declared the claims refuted at the time.
Hours before the commission’s decision became public, Trukhanov denied holding a Russian passport and called circulating documents “fake.” He published what he described as a forged passport allegedly issued on 15 December 2015, insisting he was in Odesa that day with archived social media photos as proof.
Trukhanov called it “another provocation that has been going on since 2014,” and claimed that Ukrainian authorities had repeatedly verified his documents.
What remains unclear is why the commission acted now. The citizenship allegations have circulated for over a decade. Whether the timing reflects new evidence, changing political calculations during wartime, or pressure from Western partners remains unknown. Neither the presidential office nor the commission has publicly explained what prompted the decision.
The corruption cases that never stuck
What makes Trukhanov’s removal remarkable isn’t the citizenship allegation—it’s that corruption charges involving far more money never removed him from office:
- The Kraian Factory scandal (2016): Odesa’s city council bought a building for 185 million hryvnias ($6.8 million) from a company that had purchased it for 11.5 million hryvnias ($423,000). Anti-corruption detectives alleged Trukhanov conspired to pocket the difference through inflated pricing. Courts set a 30.9 million hryvnia ($1.1 million) bail in April 2023. He stayed in office.
- Land appropriation case (2021): Prosecutors charged Trukhanov with schemes to seize six land plots totaling 15.9 hectares, with damages reaching 689 million hryvnias ($25.4 million). NABU and SAPO sent the case to court in December 2024. He stayed in office.
- Declaration violations (2020): Anti-corruption courts found Trukhanov failed to declare assets worth at least 51 million hryvnias ($1.9 million) during 2015-2016, including apartments, parking spaces, and bank interest. The case was eventually closed. He stayed in office.
The pattern: Ukrainian prosecutors could charge him, courts could order bail, investigators could document hundreds of millions in alleged fraud—but nothing removed him from power. Until Russian citizenship allegations resurfaced during the war with Russia.
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London luxury and oil mafia ties
Trukhanov’s connections extend beyond Ukraine. A 2018 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international investigative journalism consortium, found that an offshore company formerly owned by his common-law wife and daughter purchased a £3.7 million ($5.2 million) luxury apartment at The Chilterns in Marylebone—later occupied by the daughter of Alexander Angert, known as “the Angel”, “the don of Odesa” or “the don of dons” and the leader of Odesa’s notorious 1990s “oil mafia.”
Trukhanov’s name appears in a 1998 Italian police report identifying him as a member of the criminal group that controlled oil shipments and was suspected of money laundering, drug trafficking, and smuggling.
The gang no longer operates, but the London apartment connection showed Trukhanov’s ties to former members remained active as recently as 2016.
Despite claiming modest income, his 2024 mayoral salary was 1.1 million hryvnias ($40,700) per year, up from previous years when he declared less than 300,000 hryvnias ($11,000) annually—his family controlled properties across Odesa and maintained offshore structures managing luxury real estate in one of London’s most expensive neighborhoods. His 2024 declaration showed he held $167,000 in cash, while his mother had over $500,000.
What happens next?
Once Zelenskyy signs the decree, Odesa City Council Secretary Ihor Koval, a Servant of the People party member, would automatically become acting mayor. When Dumska asked about the commission’s decision, Koval deflected: “There are a lot of rumors right now that aren’t officially confirmed, so I won’t comment on them. Today I perform the functions of city council secretary, and what happens next, life will show.”
But Zelenskyy faces bigger decisions. He could establish a city military administration directly subordinate to Kyiv, as in Chernihiv.
A new military administration head would inherit a hostile city council whose powers remain intact. Removing the entire deputy corps would require Verkhovna Rada approval.
Former Odesa City Council Secretary Oleksii Potapskyi warned Dumska that removing the mayor could return the city to “chaos of a power vacuum” amid constant Russian strikes and the need to launch the heating season.
“Various structures will collapse like dominoes. People will leave their positions because they worked by building certain relationships with leadership,” Potapskyi said.
“How do we enter the heating season in such a situation? And all the negatives will now go directly to Zelenskyy. He removed Trukhanov, now ‘the president’s person’ will run the city.”
Odesa last functioned without a mayor in 2013 after Oleksii Kostusiev fled, with former Trukhanov associate Oleh Bryndak serving as acting mayor.
Wartime pivot couldn’t save him
Following Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Trukhanov transformed his rhetoric from pro-Russian to pro-Ukrainian. He condemned the war in video appeals to Russian forces and supported Ukraine. On 3 June 2022, the city launched a Municipal Center for Employment Assistance for Internally Displaced Persons and created a “Veteran Hub” service center. As of 1 January 2024, district social protection departments in Odesa had registered 85,500 internally displaced persons.
Despite leading the Opposition Bloc in the 2019 parliamentary elections, Trukhanov maintained his position throughout the war by demonstrating loyalty to Ukraine’s defense efforts.
But he couldn’t fully shed his past. After 2022, Trukhanov repeatedly opposed dismantling monuments to Aleksandr Pushkin and Count Vorontsov, arguing that Pushkin’s monument held UNESCO World Heritage status. This drew criticism as Ukraine pursued decommunization and decolonization.
For a mayor who weathered a decade of corruption allegations totaling hundreds of millions in damages, survived documented connections to organized crime, and maintained power through regime changes and a full-scale invasion, the Russian citizenship question, the oldest and most persistent accusation, proved the one he couldn’t survive.
The change reveals Ukraine’s wartime calculus: corruption investigations could continue indefinitely while a mayor remained in office, but Russian ties during Russia’s invasion crossed a line that even Trukhanov’s political survival skills couldn’t navigate.
