President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday revoked the Ukrainian citizenship of the mayor of Odesa, the country’s third-largest city, on the ground that he was a citizen of Russia, according to the country’s security services.
The move, which effectively pushes the mayor out of office, marks the most dramatic escalation yet in a feud between the national authorities in Kyiv and local leaders across Ukraine. These local officials say that Mr. Zelensky is using wartime powers to tighten his grip on cities and regions governed by opposition politicians.
The Odesa mayor, Hennady Trukhanov, who has been in office since 2014, denied in a statement that he held Russian citizenship and said he would appeal the decision before Ukraine’s Supreme Court. Ukrainian law bars the country’s citizens from holding Russian citizenship.
Accusations that Mr. Trukhanov, a former member of a now-banned pro-Russia party, was a citizen of Russia have circulated for years. Ukraine’s security services said in 2016 that they had found no proof. Mr. Trukhanov has also been accused by Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities of embezzling public money.
Mr. Trukhanov has largely restrained his criticism of Mr. Zelensky during the war. But he has opposed certain policies, such as renaming streets and removing statues associated with imperial Russia. Odesa, a city heavily shaped by the Russian Empire, is full of such symbols.
Mr. Zelensky’s action against Mr. Trukhanov comes amid rising tensions with mayors of other large cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. Mr. Zelensky and his allies have accused the local leaders of mismanaging public services and failing to protect their cities from Russian air attacks. The mayors say that efforts to curtail their authority are aimed at concentrating power in Mr. Zelensky’s hands, and weakening his opponents as potential candidates in elections that he says will resume once the war is over.
“Our president has been in power for six years, and only now he has suddenly discovered that Mr. Trukhanov allegedly has Russian citizenship,” Oleksii Potapskyi, head of the opposition party European Solidarity in the Odesa City Council, told a local news outlet. “You know, this is more of a political crackdown. It has nothing to do with democracy.”
Earlier this year, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, accused Mr. Zelensky of abusing martial law powers to overrule the City Council. Around the same time, Ukraine’s national security council froze the bank accounts of former President Petro O. Poroshenko, whom Mr. Zelensky defeated in 2019, without leveling any specific accusations.
In late September, a petition was launched urging Mr. Zelensky to revoke Mr. Trukhanov’s Ukrainian citizenship. It quickly reached the 25,000 signatures required for the president to consider it.
In recent days, Mr. Zelensky had publicly criticized the mayor, saying that efforts to restore power to Odesa and surrounding areas after Russian attacks had failed and that “there have been many mistakes by local authorities.”
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s security services published a document resembling a Russian passport that bore Mr. Trukhanov’s name and face. They said that Mr. Trukhanov had received the document on Dec. 15, 2015, and that it was valid for 10 years.
While stripping Mr. Trukhanov of his citizenship effectively ousts him from his position, he said he would continue to perform his duties until the City Council dismissed him.
The national authorities did not say if they would move to expel Mr. Trukhanov from Ukraine or, if they did so, where he would be sent.
On Tuesday evening, Mr. Zelensky, pointing to “security issues” in Odesa that he said had remained unaddressed, announced that he would establish a military administration for the city and would appoint its head shortly.
Civil society groups in Ukraine have long raised concerns that the central government uses military administrators to consolidate authority, even on matters unrelated to defense.
“Revoking Trukhanov’s citizenship and establishing the Odesa military administration is an open signal to every mayor that everyone is under scrutiny and, when the time comes, they’ll get to each of them,” Oleksii Honcharenko, a lawmaker from Mr. Poroshenko’s party, wrote on social media.
Olha Konovalova contributed reporting.
Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.
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