A court in Kyiv placed former longtime Odesa mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov under round-the-clock house arrest for 60 days on charges of official negligence, weeks after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stripped him of Ukrainian citizenship.
The Pechersk District Court in Kyiv imposed the measure on October 31, granting the prosecution's request after Trukhanov was suspected of mishandling floods in Odesa, which led to the deaths of several people.
A former lawmaker in Ukraine’s parliament and mayor of the Black Sea port since 2014, Trukhanov had been notified several days earlier that he was suspected of improperly performing his official duties.
Speaking via video link at a court hearing, Trukhanov called the charge a "planned political diversion" and claimed that he did nothing wrong.
According to the investigation, the former mayor failed to ensure the proper functioning of the city’s drainage systems and inform the population about the threat of an emergency on September 30, the day deadly floods struck the key Ukrainian port city.
"As a result of flooding in part of the city, caused by the storm sewer system’s failure to drain water from the streets, nine people died, including a nine-year-old child," the prosecution said in a statement on October 29.
Trukhanov said that his being named as a suspect came as a "surprise" to him, though he acknowledged that the problem with drainage systems in Odesa was "catastrophic."
"Resolving it requires billions of hryvnias in investment and government support. The city alone could never manage it," he added.
Right after the tragedy on September 30, Trukhanov said that nearly two months’ worth of rainfall fell in the city in just seven hours. "No stormwater drainage system could withstand such a load," he wrote in his Telegram.
Two weeks after the floods hit Odesa, Zelenskyy announced he was revoking Trukhanov’s citizenship, citing reports by the country’s main security agency that he held a Russian passport.
Trukhanov has vowed to sue to get back his Ukrainian citizenship.
Trukhanov has long faced accusations of holding Russian citizenship, which is illegal under Ukrainian law. Earlier, some Odesa residents launched a petition to strip him of his Ukrainian citizenship, claiming he also paid taxes in Russia.
However, not everyone was convinced, arguing that Trukhanov was elected fairly and that, with the war raging across the country to repel invading Russian forces, there are more pressing issues.
