The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has enough evidence that former Odesa mayor Hennadii Trukhanov has Russian citizenship.
President Volodymyr Zelensky reported this at a meeting with journalists.
"There is additional information from the registers from the State Border Guard Service, which also coincides with the fact that Trukhanov has Russian citizenship. How many passports are there? Which of them are real? Which of them are fake? Who makes them? Frankly,Iʼm not interested. Is there a 100% fact that he is a Russian citizen? SBU and border guards tell me ʼyesʼ," Zelensky stressed.
He emphasized that depriving Trukhanov of citizenship is not a political step.
"I took a completely practical step. And I believe that it was done in accordance with the law and done fairly. Because no one knows what to expect from the ʼRussiansʼ and how interested they are in Odesa. As president, I must be sure that the people who lead the government there will definitely protect Odesa and will definitely protect it. That was the choice I had with the appropriate candidate," he concluded.
What preceded
SBU reported on October 14 that the Ukrainian citizenship of Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov was terminated because it was determined that he is a citizen of the Russian Federation and has a valid Russian passport.
According to SBU, in December 2015 he received a Russian passport.
The special service says that in 2017, Trukhanovʼs representatives filed a complaint with Russian authorities — a court in the Moscow region revoked the validity of his internal passport.
At the same time, the court noted that a person does not lose Russian citizenship even when he or she cancels or renounces this document, if it was obtained legally.
The day before, on October 13, an electronic petition appeared on the president’s website demanding the termination of Ukrainian citizenship of Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov. It collected the required number of signatures in less than 24 hours. Journalists have long claimed that Trukhanov holds a Russian passport, but he denies this.
Hennadii Trukhanov himself says that he will appeal the decision to deprive him of Ukrainian citizenship in the Supreme Court, and "if that is not enough" — in the European Court of Human Rights.
Russiaʼs The Insider claims that SBU published a fake passport because a document with the same number belongs to a Russian woman Tatyana. The passport number also suggests that it was issued on November 2, 2010, and not December 15, 2015, as stated.
The Secretary of the Odesa City Council Ihor Koval was appointed acting mayor of Odesa.
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