28 June 2025
(Photo collage: Intent)
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov is at the center of another scandal over the monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin on Primorsky Boulevard in Odesa.
On June 27, a video was posted on social media in which the mayor, in response to the question of why the monument had not been removed, asked a former journalist and soldier of the 122nd Brigade, Myroslav Otkovych, why he was not in a trench.
"For you, Pushkin is an adherent of the 'Russian world,' but for me he is not an 'adherent of the Russian world,' but a historical cultural value, like the opera house and the Potemkin Stairs," the mayor said in response to the soldier's question.
Later, when Myroslav Otkovych tried to explain his position by saying that, unlike the Opera House or the Giant (Potemkin) Stairs, Pushkin is constantly used in his speeches, in particular by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as an indicator of the cultural affiliation of Ukrainian cities with Russian culture, Hennadiy Trukhanov accused the military of splitting society.
The incident took place on Exchange Square in Odesa, where an installation dedicated to Ukrainian cities affected by Russian attacks is currently installed in front of the city council building.
The soldier told Ukrayinska Pravda that on June 27 he was in Odesa to establish cooperation with local volunteers and to promote the defense capability of the unit. Near the Odesa City Council, he saw a street exhibition with missile fragments and markings of strikes on each Ukrainian city, and against this background, the presence of a monument to Pushkin nearby seemed cynical to him.
It should be noted that on June 28, activists of the public organization "We are getting on your nerves" staged a rally in support of the dismantling of the monument to Pushkin in Odesa.
Кирило Бойко