The suspension of Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov and the transfer of his powers to officials appointed from Kyiv has escalated into a political scandal. During a session of the Verkhovna Rada, MP Oleksiy Honcharenko accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of usurping power and undermining local self-government, reminding lawmakers that the president’s party had little support among voters in the city. Meanwhile, as criticism of the president mounts, Trukhanov and his deputies have themselves come under investigation for negligence that allegedly led to fatalities during the recent flooding.
MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, speaking from the parliamentary rostrum, accused Volodymyr Zelensky of seizing power in Odesa following the dismissal of Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov. He recalled that in the 2020 local elections, the candidate from the Servant of the People party received only 9% of the vote, while the party itself secured 15% of seats in the city council.
“Today all power in Odesa—without elections and without democracy—has simply been handed to Zelensky’s appointees. It happened to Odesa today, and tomorrow it could happen to Dnipro, Lviv, or Kyiv—any city in Ukraine,” the MP said.
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According to Honcharenko, the president “no longer knows what other powers to claim” and seeks to appoint city leaders directly, “managing everything down to the local utilities.” He described this as “the destruction of Magdeburg rights” and said that such practices “have nothing in common with Europe.”
Meanwhile, Trukhanov and his deputies have been formally charged with official negligence. According to media reports, they are accused of failing to take necessary measures before, during, and after the September 30 flood that claimed at least ten lives. On the evening of October 28, the former mayor, two of his deputies, and several other officials were served with notices of suspicion and motions for pretrial detention.