{"id":2607,"date":"2020-12-17T09:28:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T09:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=140356"},"modified":"2020-12-17T09:28:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T09:28:28","slug":"influential-eastern-ukrainian-mayor-dies-in-germany-after-covid-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/17\/influential-eastern-ukrainian-mayor-dies-in-germany-after-covid-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Influential Eastern Ukrainian Mayor Dies In Germany After COVID Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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KYIV — One of Ukraine\u2019s most influential and outspoken politicians, Hennadiy Kernes, the mayor of the eastern city of Kharkiv, has died of complications from COVID-19.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the Kharkiv city council, Yuriy Sydorenko, confirmed to RFE\/RL<\/a><\/strong> on December 17 that Kernes, 61, died overnight in a German clinic.<\/p>\n

He had been there undergoing treatment for weeks after contracting the coronavirus and falling ill in mid-September.<\/p>\n

Kernes’ wife, Oksana Haysynska, and his associate, Pavlo Fuks, reported the mayor’s death to other media outlets earlier in the day.<\/p>\n

Kernes won reelection and his eponymous Kernes Bloc won around 40 percent of the vote in Ukraine’s second-largest city in late October despite Kernes not having been seen in public since August.<\/p>\n

His absence fueled a regional police case after a local rival filed a missing persons report and there was speculation that he had died<\/p>\n

Reports a week ago had suggested that Kernes’ condition was grave after both of his kidneys failed and doctors in Germany connected him to a life-support machine.<\/p>\n

Kernes had served two mayoral terms since 2010 and was required by law to turn up for the first session of the new city council by December 20 to begin a third term.<\/p>\n

Kernes survived a gun attack that left him requiring a wheelchair in April 2014, a time of growing instability in eastern Ukraine and a month after Moscow forcibly annexed the Crimean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

Kernes initially gave his backing to the pro-Russia separatists in the east before later switching his loyalty to the Ukrainian government.<\/p>\n

Kharkiv is just 20 kilometers from the Russian border.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KYIV \u2014 One of Ukraine\u2019s most influential and outspoken politicians, Hennadiy Kernes, the mayor of the eastern city of Kharkiv, has died of complications from COVID-19. A spokesman\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,23,106,376],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}