Why Are Odesa Authorities Still Playing into Putin’s Hands?
On 14 December 2023, Russian dictator Putin, who is wanted internationally, claimed that Odesa was supposedly a Russian city. Indeed, we still feel the echoes of years of attempts by pro-Russian politicians to cultivate hatred of Ukraine and Russify Ukrainian Odesa. Today, however, many of yesterday’s openly pro-Putin figures publicly play the patriotism card. One of the tools of Russia’s information war was and remains the current anti-Ukrainian Charter of the City of Odesa.
Let us recall how it was adopted.
The Odesa Charter was developed as part of the same package as the ‘Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law’
On 26 August 2011, a draft law ‘On the Principles of State Language Policy’, better known as the ‘Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law’, was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada. The law was adopted on 3 July 2012 and remained in force until 28 February 2018, when the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared it unconstitutional and invalid.
Literally one day after the draft ‘Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law’ was submitted, on 28
August 2011, Odesa City Council adopted the Charter of the City of Odesa. This makes it possible to assume that the Odesa Charter was developed as part of the same package as the ‘Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law’. Its wording remains unchanged to this day.
Analysis of the Odesa Charter
In brief, all 44 articles of the Charter can be reduced to three propositions:
- Odesa is a city within the Russian Empire;
- only the Russian language is used in Odesa, and it even receives, for
unclear reasons, the status of the city’s cultural heritage; - all manifestations of civil-society activity — the so-called instruments of local democracy — are suppressed as much as possible.
Green Leaf NGO analysed the Charter of the City of Odesa a year and a half ago (the analysis is available via the link). On 21 June 2022, a letter with the relevant explanations was sent to the city mayor, but as of today this
anti-Ukrainian Charter remains in force. In practice, many of yesterday’s openly anti-Ukrainian figures continue to influence regional politics through the parliamentary factions of Opposition Platform — For Life and Trust in Deeds, and within the business empires of Kivalov, Markov, Hrynevetskyi and others.
Odesa still has, as its principal city document, an openly anti-Ukrainian Charter in which Odesa is a city within the Russian Empire, Russian is the only language in the city, and Odesa residents supposedly take pride in the exploits of Russian soldiers.
Not a single street named after fallen heroes!
Let us also recall that since 2014 the Odesa mayor’s office, controlled by Hennadii Trukhanov, has not named a single street after fallen heroes. Moreover, in 2020 Trukhanov statedthat streets renamed by the regional administration in 2017 in accordance with the decommunisation law would have their old Soviet names restored. This was preceded by corresponding decisions of the historical and toponymic commission of Odesa City Council.
For several years, the mayor’s office legal department spent local-budget funds challenging the name ‘Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred’ and other names in court, but lost.
Even after the start of the full-scale invasion, the city council refused to rename Bocharova Street after Hero of Ukraine Vladyslav Buvalkin and has not put other proposals submitted by the military command, relatives and the public up for public discussion. The composition of the historical and toponymic commission has effectively not changed since 2016, while Odesa’s toponymic space is being filled with ‘linoleum-and-tomato’ street names convenient for Russian propaganda. Are these not among the factors that give Russian forces confidence?