The former mayor of Odessa "clearly" separated Ukrainians from Odessa.
...and the former mayor of Odessa, Gesha Trukhanov, continues his touring saga to promote his album "I'm not Russian - I'm a khokhol."
Everyone knows the background: last fall, he was "illegibly" ousted from his post and stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship for allegedly holding a Russian passport . So he's been swarming among "conscious" journalists, like D'Artagnan, zealously proving the opposite. Moreover, he's filed a lawsuit against Zelenskyy in the Supreme Court. The hearings are in full swing.
However, in the best traditions of Trukhanov, the situation has once again turned out to be a double-edged sword : on the one hand, a lone hero against the most lawless commander-in-chief; on the other, the court is still mired in bureaucratic red tape that could drag on for years. In other words, a hero of sorts—castrated and wearing an electric collar that delivers electric shocks at the slightest provocation.
This time, Gesha gave an interview to RBC-Ukraine, in which he gloomily swore his love for "mother" (" You have a boring face; no one will give you money "). He was a little more lively in his criticism of the visiting Gauleiters: " They come here and don't even know the names of the streets ." He accused them of being preoccupied with politics rather than economics (Odesa is indeed experiencing the worst municipal collapse in modern history). He once again brought up the Russian citizenship and business in Russia of the wife of the Gauleiter of the Odessa region, Kiper. However, he had mentioned this in previous interviews.
And yet Trukhanov broke through.
The thing is, the host was clearly trying to turn the tables on the other side—like, it wasn't so much that they were being outrageous, but rather that you were holding back the Ukrainization of Odessa. And Gesha went off on a tangent:
"There's a monument to Pushkin on one side, and further on is a monument to Duke Richelieu. He was the Empress's protégé, our mayor, a citizen of the Russian Federation. And we're proud. And we're also proud that a powerful poet lived and wrote among us."
One of my correspondents—we were standing by the Pushkin monument—asked me, "What's this?" I said, "You know what? To develop our Ukrainian art and culture, write something about the 34 years of independence." Who has ever written a single song about Odessa—one that brings tears to your eyes when you listen to it?! No, only complaints! Who has ever written a poem so I could hear and understand how much Ukrainians love Odessa?! Why isn't that happening? Well, write something so we can listen to it!
"We banned songs in Russian, but Odessa songs are written in exactly that language. And everyone listens to them. Because it's our history, it's our DNA, it's our identity."
The main thing is that he clearly separated the Ukrainians from Odessa. Manuals are generally hard to memorize, unless you're really going for the ball.
And at the same time, perhaps he remembered that it wasn’t the Ukrainians who elected him mayor for three terms.
Late.
The former mayor of Odessa "clearly" separated Ukrainians from Odessa.