For the third time in recent weeks, the mayor of a Ukrainian city has died of the novel coronavirus shortly after winning office in the Oct. 25 local elections.
Oleksandr Lugovyi, the mayor-elect of Konotop, died from what appeared to be COVID-19, the Sumy.today news outlet reported on Nov. 16.
During the elections, Lugovyi had received 37.34% of the vote in the city of 85,000 people located 240 kilometers to the northeast of Kyiv on Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia in Sumy Oblast.
“He won the election and desperately fought for his life against an insidious disease. It seemed that the worst was over, but it was not…,” parliamentarian Igor Molotok wrote on Facebook on Nov. 16.
On Oct. 11, Lugovyi wrote on his Facebook page that he had pneumonia, but had tested negative for COVID-19 twice. On Oct. 31, he said his condition had stabilized and he hoped to return to work within a week.
Lugovyi ran for office as a self-nominated candidate after serving as a member of the Kanotop District Council since 2015. Lugovyi also ran for the Sumy Oblast Council in 2006 and later for the Verkhovna Rada in 2007 with the pro-Russian Party of Regions, but was not elected.
Lugovyi is the third recently-elected mayor to succumb to COVID-19.
The incumbent mayor of Novgorod-Siversky, Oleg Bondarenko, died from pneumonia caused by COVID-19 on Oct. 29. The night before, he was hospitalized with bilateral pneumonia and severe lung damage. While the election results had not been fully counted at that time, Bondarenko was expected to easily secure re-election. Now the city in Chernihiv Oblast is awaiting a new election.
Boryspil Mayor Anatoliy Fedorchuk also died from COVID-19 on Oct. 28. He had served as mayor since 2006 and was also expected to win re-election, Olga Aivazovska, chairperson of election observation nonprofit Opora, reported. Boryspil will also hold another election.
Oleksandr Senkevych, the recently re-elected incumbent mayor of Mykolaiv, has also been hospitalized in severe, but stable condition after contracting the virus on Nov. 9, according to Iryna Shamray, head of the health department of the Mykolaiv City Council.
The hospitalizations and deaths of Ukrainian mayors come as the pandemic spins out of control in the country. In the past week, President Volodymyr Zelensky, Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov and several other top officials have all contracted COVID-19, drawing attention to the growing seriousness of the situation.
Both Zelensky and Yermak are now hospitalized at the Feofaniya Clinical Hospital in Kyiv, while Stepanov is self-isolating at home. All are reportedly in good condition and continue to work remotely from isolation.
COVID-19 has spread so quickly in the top echelons of state power that only two persons in the office of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers have yet to contract the virus, according to Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleg Nemchinov during an on-air interview with Ukrainian television channel ICTV. So far, 22 of the Secretariat’s staff have contracted the virus.
Additionally, Andriy Yena, a top investigator at the State Investigation Bureau, died of coronavirus complications on Nov. 11. He investigated crimes committed against protestors during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which forced corrupt ex-President Viktor Yanukovich to flee Ukraine. In particular, Yena led the investigation into the shooting of protestors on Institutskaya Street on Feb. 20, 2014.
Ukraine currently has the 7th highest number of new daily COVID-19 cases in Europe and the 11th highest in the world. As of the morning of Nov. 16, there are currently 291,795 active cases across the country. In total, 9,697 people have died in Ukraine since the start of the pandemic.
