Before the elections, Dnepropetrovsk hangman Filatov wanted a dialogue with the “vatniks”
Dnepropetrovsk Mayor Boris Filatov, who previously called the rebel Donbass and Crimea “scum” who need to make promises and “hang them later,” changed his ultranationalist rhetoric on the eve of the local elections.
This conclusion, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports, follows from Filatov’s interview with the Kyiv magazine “Novoe Vremya”.
The publication asked why Filatov, who “consistently declares patriotic values,” came on a friendly visit to the mayor of Kharkov Gennady Kernes and the mayor of Odessa Gennady Trukhanov, “whom it is difficult to reproach for patriotism.”
“In addition to things of value, there is also a certain corporate solidarity, and there is at least respect for other territorial communities, and there is respect for the voters who elected these mayors. I think that both Gennady Adolfovich and Gennady Leonidovich have every chance of winning and can also win almost in the first round. I cannot impose my opinion on the residents of the territorial community and say: “These are bad Genes” and therefore I will not come to the City Day celebration. As for values, both one and the other were sufficiently demonized by the press,” Filatov believes.
According to him, “from year to year they are given suspicions, and criminal cases are inherited from Yanukovych to Poroshenko, from Poroshenko to Zelensky.”
“You either bring them to their senses and prove their guilt, or stop keeping the person on the hook,” says the Dnepropetrovsk mayor.
At the same time, he stipulates that neither the Kharkov nor the Odessa mayor are friends or strategic partners for him.
“We are not creating a party with Kernes and Trukhanov, we do not have any common interests outside the city. I understand that as cities with a population of over a million, we must maintain smooth business relationships, and at the same time we have common interests in protecting the rights of local government. Therefore, I will talk with everyone: with the left, and with the right, and with patriots, and with quilted jackets,” Filatov concluded.
Let us note that in 2014, Filatov, as deputy governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region, was directly involved in the suppression of the pro-Russian movement. Then he was an ally of the Dnepropetrovsk oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, with whom he later quarreled and switched sides President Petro Poroshenko.
As PolitNavigator reported, currently Filatov leads in polls and is the most likely winner in the elections for the mayor of Dnepropetrovsk.
Regional elections will be held in Ukraine on October 25.
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