Former Odesa Mayor Trukhanov claims he received documents proving he does not have Russian citizenship

Former Odesa mayor Hennadii Trukhanov said that he received official documents from the Russian registry stating that he does not have Russian citizenship.

Trukhanov published a video and a post about this on his social networks.

He claims that in the four months since President Volodymyr Zelensky stripped him of his citizenship, he has not received any answers from Ukrainian authorities. Therefore, his lawyers have turned to states that have diplomatic relations with Russia to make an official request to Russian registers. On December 30, he received a response that he does not have Russian citizenship.

Trukhanov appealed to the Commission under the President of Ukraine on Citizenship with a request to review the decision and inform Zelensky that he does not have Russian citizenship.

What preceded

On October 14, then-Mayor of Odesa Hennadii Trukhanov had his Ukrainian citizenship revoked because SBU determined that he was a citizen of the Russian Federation and had a valid Russian passport. According to SBU, he received a Russian passport in December 2015.

The special service says that in 2017, Trukhanovʼs representatives filed a complaint with Russian authorities, after a court in the Moscow region revoked his internal passport. At the same time, the court noted that a person does not lose Russian citizenship even if he cancels or renounces this document, if it was obtained legally.

The acting mayor of Odesa was appointed as the secretary of the Odesa City Council Ihor Koval. A city military administration was also created in the city, headed by the former head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration Serhiy Lysak.

On October 15, the Russian media outlet The Insider reported that SBU had published a fake of Trukhanovʼs Russian passport. The journalists claim that Hennadii Trukhanov had two Russian passports:

• the first one starts with the number 4604. It was issued on April 15, 2003, then it was lost;
• the second begins with the number 4611. It was issued on March 24, 2012, to replace the lost one. The application for this passport, which is in the possession of The Insider, contains a note “due to reaching the age of 45”.

At the same time, Trukhanov denies that he ever had Russian citizenship.

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