Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov has been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) announced that the reason for this decision was Trukhanov’s possession of Russian citizenship in addition to his Ukrainian one.
Trukhanov and Alleged Russian Citizenship Details
According to the SBU, the Odesa mayor holds a valid Russian foreign passport, which was issued on December 15, 2015. This issuance occurred after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began and Crimea was annexed.
The SBU’s statement further detailed that in 2017, Trukhanov’s representatives petitioned Russian authorities. Subsequently, a court in the Moscow Oblast invalidated his internal Russian passport. However, the court’s supplementary clarification noted that “the annulment of or a person’s refusal of such a document does not lead to the deprivation of Russian Federation citizenship acquired by a person on legal grounds.” The SBU concluded, “Thus, Hennadiy Trukhanov remains a citizen of the aggressor state, the Russian Federation, and also has an identification code recorded in the database of the Russian Federal Tax Service.”
It is noteworthy that on October 13, 2025, a petition was filed on the President’s Office website. Initiated by Myroslav Vasylyovych Otkovych, it demanded Trukhanov be stripped of Ukrainian citizenship due to his Russian passport. Otkovych argued that this fact “creates potential risks to national security and undermines citizens’ trust in local authorities.”
The petition’s initiator also claimed that Trukhanov’s actions, such as “advocating narratives beneficial to the aggressor state in the public sphere, and defending monuments containing symbols of Russian imperial policy (as per the officially published list of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory), only confirm the potential risk posed by Trukhanov’s activities to the nation’s security and defense.”
Ukrainian media, including the Gordon outlet, reported that the SBU questioned Trukhanov about dual citizenship in 2016. At the time, he “denied holding a Russian passport.” In May 2016, the Odesa mayor posted a photo on his Facebook page showing a certificate from the Russian Consulate General in Odesa, stating he did not have Russian citizenship.
On October 13, 2025, Trukhanov stated that information about his alleged Russian citizenship was again circulating online. He emphasized his 12 years as Odesa’s leader, asserting that this meant he had undergone “the highest levels of all possible checks for a Ukrainian official, including for the presence of any citizenship other than Ukrainian.”
Today, on Suspilne, he declared his intention to defend himself through Ukrainian courts and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights. BBC News Ukraine notes that Trukhanov will most likely lose his position as Odesa mayor. This is because, according to local self-government law, the deprivation of citizenship serves as grounds for the early termination of a mayor’s powers.
