The former head of the Odesa District Council boasted in Russian that he had brought its work to a standstill

Vitaliy Barvinenko, the former chairman of the Odesa District Council, published a post in Russian on his social media accounts in which he effectively admitted that he had disrupted the work of the district council and rendered it inoperable.

The politician intended to use this post to criticize the actions of Igor Koval, the acting mayor of Odesa, following yet another disruption of a city council meeting on September 9.

“I thought I was the only one capable of bringing a collegial representative body to complete collapse, leaving it completely dysfunctional. But no, Koval has outdone me,” wrote Vitaliy Barvinenko (translation by Intent).

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Vitaliy Barvinenko resigned from his positions as chairman of the Odesa District Council and as a member of that council on December 15, 2025. At the time, he explained that, in his opinion, the authorities, using the war as a pretext, had deliberately destroyed local self-government.

The politician is known for his consistent support of former Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov and for criticizing the work of the city council. Media reports indicated that after Hennadiy Trukhanov was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship and effectively lost the right to lead his own party, “Trust the Deeds,” Vitaliy Barvinenko attempted to take control of the party, but many of his fellow party members disagreed, and the party faced a crisis that also affected the work of the city council.

A History of Corruption 

In February 2025, the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine approved a plea agreement between the prosecutor andVitaliy Barvinenko, a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament and current head of the Odesa Regional Council.  

Under the agreement, the former MP was found guilty of illegally receiving 613,000 hryvnias in compensation for renting housing in the capital. The damages caused by the former MP’s unlawful actions were fully compensated.

The court sentenced him to three years of imprisonment, with a one-year ban on holding public office, and a fine of 17,000 hryvnias.

However, the court suspended Vitaliy Barvinenko’s main sentence, establishing a one-year probationary period, which he has already completed.

The Separatism Scandal

In 2018, Member of Parliament Mustafa Nayem accused Vitaliy Barvinenko of planning in 2015 to blow up bridges across the Dniester Estuary and the Dniester River in the Odesa region, and then to announce the creation of the “Bessarabian People’s Republic.” This came after Vasyl Hrytsak, then head of the Security Service of Ukraine, stated during a speech at “Ukrainian Week in London” that a sitting member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine was to become the leader of the so-called “Bessarabian People’s Council.” 

In 2015,Olena Hlishchynska, an aide to Vitaliy Barvinenko, was accused of separatism and of establishing the “People’s Council of Bessarabia.” She was later exchanged by Russia for the Ukrainians Yuriy Soloshenko and Hennadiy Afanasyev.

Кирило Бойко