When Rudy Giuliani traveled to Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, in November 2017 to advise the mayor, an unconventional scene awaited him. In an anteroom outside the mayor’s office, his pet parrot, Johnny, perched in a large metal cage. Giuliani doesn’t speak Russian, so Johnny’s standard squawk to visitors—“Privet!” (Russian for “hello”)—was perhaps lost on him. But the mayor’s security precautions certainly were not.
An armed policeman in a bulletproof vest guarded the anteroom, where a motley collection of visitors waited with Johnny to see the mayor, Hennadiy Kernes, who’s ruled over this city less than an hour from the Russian border for the past nine years. Beyond the bird lay another waiting area with bodyguards, all with the blunt, ex-mixed-martial-artist look common to the profession in the former Soviet Union. Inside the mayor’s office were a large lion and a small lynx, stuffed.
