On Sept. 28, Michel Terestchenko, the French descendant of one of the Russian Empire’s richest dynasties, was packing his stuff and moving from the office of the mayor of Hlukhiv. In this northern Ukrainian city of 34,000 people in Sumy Oblast, Tereshchenko’s family of industrialists and philanthropists had made its fortune in the 19th century.
In 2015, Paris-born Tereshchenko made the headlines when he became a mayor there with 65 percent of support and pledged to revive his ancestral home. But on Sept. 27 Tereshchenko resigned, accusing City Council members of blocking his work under influenced by the local strongman lawmaker Andriy Derkach.
“I have no other choice than leave,” Tereshchenko told the Kyiv Post by phone.
Tereshchenko claimed his work has been blocked since December by City Council members, who were “bought” by his rival Derkach. The council failed to convene and pass the city budget and any social and economic program offered by the mayor.
“We couldn’t do anything because they didn’t agree on any of our projects of city development,” Tereshchenko said. “The city is paralyzed.”
Derkach wasn’t available for comment by the contacts posted on his website.
Tereshchenko said Derkach, who is a member of the budget committee in parliament, has blocked any state subsidies to the city from the very beginning of his term. The city also didn’t get money from the oblast budget because Sumy Oblast Governor Mykola Klochko is also dependent on Derkach, Tereshchenko said.
Klochko denied this accusation, telling Hromadske Radio that Tereshchenko wants to “find guilty for his inability to rule the city.”
Tereshchenko, however, said he had many achievements on mayor’s post.
He said the city budget increased by three times from 2015 to 2017. In 2017, Tereshchenko was recognized as one of four the most innovative Ukrainian mayors, according to the rating by the International Summit of Mayors and Ukrainska Pravda influential news website.
Tereshchenko said he had opened several monuments, improved the city park, opened five new museums and launched a creation of the municipal radio.
But since the deputies blocked the work of the City Council, Tereshchenko said he was lucky to collect enough money even to pay salaries to the local medics in July and August.
“But now we are under the threat of not paying salaries to the employees of the City Council because they (the deputies) didn’t give us this possibility,” Tereshchenko said.
He added that even having the funds the mayor’s office cannot spend them without a permission of the local deputies who refuse to convene.
Even his resignation hasn’t been approved yet because not enough deputies came to the urgent meeting of the City Council on Sept. 28.
Tereshchenko also accused President Petro Poroshenko of blocking his work. In March 2015, Poroshenko granted Tereshchenko a Ukrainian passport under the media spotlight. But now Poroshenko’s party faction in Hlukhiv was among those who prompted him to resign. “The problem comes from the president,” Tereshchenko said.
Tereshchenko’s story is reminiscent to another Sumy Oblast city, Konotop, whose reformist mayor and war veteran Artem Semenikhin was sacked by the local City Council in August over the conflict with the local deputies.
