Kyiv, Ukraine – Pro-Moscow sympathies, corruption and multimillion-dollar embezzlement, reported ties to Ukrainian, Greek and Italian mobsters and the orchestration of assaults on almost a dozen anticorruption whistleblowers.

That is just an abridged list of the accusations Gennadiy Trukhanov has faced since 2014, when he was elected mayor of Odesa, the nation’s third-largest city and home to its largest seaport and the naval headquarters.

The 60-year-old former military officer and martial arts enthusiast has faced corruption-related arrests in 2018 and investigations in 2023. The latest case involves an “illegal takeover” of government-owned land for real estate development that cost $16.5m, according to Ukraine’s anticorruption prosecutors.

Russian or not?

On October 14, the pol

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