Servant of the People Wants to Nominate Comedian Oleg Filimonov for Odesa Mayor

The party of Ukraine's president aims to challenge Trukhanov.

The Servant of the People party is preparing to nominate comedian and frontman of the Odesa Gentlemen KVN team Oleg Filimonov as its candidate for mayor of Odesa. This is reported by RBC-Ukraine.

Sources at the outlet claim that Filimonov's candidacy was personally approved by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The party reportedly intends to seriously compete for the post of Odesa mayor with Hennadiy Trukhanov, who is completing his first term in office and has strong electoral positions in the city,  according to a survey by the Rating Group, 49% of respondents are ready to vote for the incumbent mayor.

Besides Trukhanov and Filimonov, the Odesa mayoral election may also feature former Central Election Commission head Serhiy Kivalov, Mykola Skoryk, or Tetyana Plachkova from the Opposition Platform — For Life, and former Odesa mayor Eduard Gurvits from UDAR.

In addition to KVN, Filimonov is known as the host of the humor programme Gentleman Show, which aired from 1991 to 2001 for broadcast across the post-Soviet space. This year he was awarded the title of People's Artist of Ukraine. 

It is noted that the Servant of the People also aims to fight for the mayoral posts in Kyiv and Dnipro (there, the party may nominate the chief physician of the Mechnikov Regional Hospital, Serhiy Ryzhenko, who is currently a regional council deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc). In other major cities, the goal is to win strong factions in city councils.

Last week, the Servant of the People selected Iryna Vereshchuk as its candidate for mayor of Kyiv in a primary election.