Despite criminal charges and a toxic reputation, Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov appears to have entrenched his power — at least, for now.
On Nov. 15, he was re-elected as mayor with 54.3 percent of the vote. Moreover, three corruption cases against him have already been closed due to controversial rulings by the Constitutional Court.
He has also fallen out with his alleged partner Vladimir Galanternik and has become independent from the influential businessman, according to local activists.
Anti-corruption activists are seeking to prevent Trukhanov from taking office or have him suspended or removed due to his Russian citizenship and corruption cases.
However, Trukhanov’s alleged political bargain with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inner circle may keep him in power, they argue.
Trukhanov’s press office and the President’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Election
In the first round on Oct. 25, Trukhanov and Mykola Skoryk from the pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life received 38.4 percent and 19.5 percent, respectively. Trukhanov won with 54.3 percent in the Nov. 15 run-off, while Skoryk was the runner-up with 42.1 percent.
Thus Odesa’s voters faced a choice between two notorious pro-Russian candidates.
This dire situation is a result of both many Odesan voters’ pro-Russian views and a lack of a strong pro-Western candidate, Vitaly Ustymenko, head of civic watchdog AutoMaidan’s Odesa branch, told the Kyiv Post.
“Due to the absence of a good pro-European candidate, people like Trukhanov and Skoryk will keep winning,” he said. “There is a total failure to create a good reformist party.”
Trukhanov not only appealed to the pro-Russian electorate but also tried to portray himself as a better choice for the pro-Ukrainian electorate compared with consistently pro-Russian Skoryk.
Oleh Filimonov, a mayoral candidate from Zelensky’s Servant of the People, initially claimed that, according to internal polls, he would get into a run-off with Trukhanov. However. eventually he performed much worse, ranking fourth with 10 percent behind Petro Obukhov from Poroshenko’s European Solidarity, who got 11.5 percent.
Filimonov’s humble result comes amid voters’ increasing disappointment with Zelensky and his party and their falling ratings.
“The Servant of the People has failed in the mayoral election in Odesa due to the bad choice of the mayoral candidate and an absolutely incoherent campaign with incoherent and often unknown candidates for the city council,” Oleh Mykhaiyk, an anti-corruption activist and another mayoral candidate, told the Kyiv Post.
Trukhanov’s Trust the Deeds party received 26.2 percent in the city council election, while the pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life was the runner-up with 23.7 percent. Zelensky’s Servant of the People, Poroshenko’s European Solidarity and pro-Russian blogger Anatoly Shariy got 12.5 percent, 11.9 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively.
Russian citizenship
Meanwhile, Mykhailo Kuzakon, an anti-corruption activist and another mayoral candidate, has sought to annul Trukhanov’s registration as a candidate, arguing that his Russian citizenship blocked him from running in the election and access to state secrets. He has also initiated a criminal case into Trukhanov’s efforts to conceal his Russian citizenship and the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) failure to react to it.
However, the first-instance court and the appeal court have rejected Kuzakon’s lawsuit.
Ukrainian law bans the voluntary acquisition of another citizenship for Ukrainian nationals, and officials are not allowed to have dual citizenship. Under Ukrainian law, officials and candidates for state jobs undergo checks by the SBU over whether they have double citizenship.
Russia’s Interior Ministry on Nov. 12 confirmed Trukhanov’s Russian citizenship in an official response to Kuzakon.
In 2017 journalists found official information on the database of Russia’s Federal Tax Service according to which Trukhanov is a Russian citizen.
Trukhanov’s Russian passport was annulled in the same year by a Russian court due to alleged procedural violations. However, subsequently the decision was overturned by a higher court.
Despite the documentary evidence, Trukhanov has denied having ever been a Russian citizen.
Political bargain?
Kuzakon has lambasted the central authorities’ reluctance to react to Trukhanov’s Russian citizenship.
There is evidence that there is a political bargain between Zelensky’s inner circle and Trukhanov, according to Kuzakon, Ustymenko and Mykhailyk.
Odesa-based businessmen Borys Kaufman and Oleksandr Hranovsky are acting as intermediaries between Trukhanov and Zelensky’s office and are increasing their clout in Odesa, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Kuzakon also confirmed that Kaufman and Hranovsky are increasing their influence on Trukhanov and Odesa.
“The central government is making a big mistake in Odesa,” Kuzakon said.
Trukhanov’s Trust the Deeds party, Zelensky’s Servant of the People and Poroshenko’s European Solidarity are highly likely to form a de facto coalition in the city council, local activists said.
Oleksandra Kovalchuk, a newly-elected city councilor from the Servant of the People and a deputy head of the Odesa Art Museum, praised Trukhanov in the run-up to the second round for helping the museum, prompting criticism from civil society.
Cases closed
Odesa-based activists argue that the criminal cases against Trukhanov are stalling due to the central government’s reluctance to antagonize him.
“The lack of the political will (to prosecute Trukhanov) is obvious – it can be seen everywhere,” Ustymenko said.
In November the High Anti-Corruption Court closed two criminal cases against Trukhanov on charges of lying in his asset declarations due to the Constitutional Court’s Oct. 27 decision to cancel criminal penalties for that.
Since Oct. 27, Zelensky and his majority in the Vekrhovna Rada have failed to find a solution for the crisis triggered by the Constitutional Court’s decision, which also effectively destroyed the asset declaration system.
In 2019 the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine closed an illicit enrichment case against Trukhanov after the Constitutional Court canceled penalties for illicit enrichment.
Last year Odesa’s Malinovsky District Court also acquitted Trukhanov in the so-called Krayan case. Trukhanov is accused of organizing a city council vote to buy the old Krayan factory administrative building for Hr 185 million in September 2016, when it had been purchased at the beginning of the year by another firm for only Hr 4 million, suggesting the deal was a scheme to embezzle money from the city.
Currently the Krayan case is undergoing the appeal stage at the High Anti-Corruption Court.
Kuzakon and Ustymenko hope that Trukhanov will be fired from his job if he is convicted by the High Anti-Corruption Court in the Krayan case.
“Trukhanov can only be defeated if he is jailed,” Ustymenko said. “In this case he might not serve until the end of his term.”
The mayor has also been investigated in several other corruption cases but has not been charged in any of them.
Kuzakon argues that Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova is blocking the charges. The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Galanternik’s clout
The political landscape in Odesa has also changed due to Trukhanov’s alleged conflict with his alleged partner Vladimir Galanternik.
Local anti-corruption activists previously accused Trukhanov and his alleged business partners, Galanternik and Alexander Angert, of having turned Odesa into their private fiefdom, awarding the most lucrative land and municipal contracts to their own companies. An Italian police dossier from 1998 identifies Trukhanov and Angert as members of a mafia gang, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a Kyiv Post partner, in 2016.
Galanternik’s clout in Odesa has decreased significantly, several sources, including Kuzakon, told the Kyiv Post. He has not visited Odesa recently due to fear of ongoing criminal cases, Kuzakon said.
“Galanternik’s influence has disappeared,” he added.
