Oleksandr Turchynov was born in Dnipropetrovsk (nowDnipro). He graduated from theDnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1986, after which he worked atKryvorizhstal, a large Ukrainian steel producer.[24] From 1987 to 1990, he served as head of the agitation and propaganda division of the Dnipropetrovsk OblastKomsomol (Communist Youth League) Committee, which was led bySerhiy Tihipko.[24] Tihipko and Turchynov became political advisers ofLeonid Kuchma, then head of Dnipropetrovsk-basedPivdenmash missile manufacturer.[24] Kuchma and his entire team, including Tihipko and Turchynov, moved to Kyiv in 1992, after Kuchma was appointedPrime Minister.[24] In 1993, Turchynov was formally appointed an advisor on economic issues to Prime Minister Kuchma.[24]
Turchynov is a long-time ally ofYulia Tymoshenko, another prominent Ukrainian political figure from Dnipropetrovsk. They used to have a common business in Dnipropetrovsk. In December 1993, Turchynov co-founded and became Vice President of Ukrainian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs. In 1994, he created the political partyHromada together withPavlo Lazarenko, a business ally of Tymoshenko.[24] Turchynov was also director of the Economic Reforms Institute from January 1994 to March 1998 and was head of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences' Laboratory ofShadow Economy Research.[25][26]
In1998, he was elected to theVerkhovna Rada as a member of Hromada. Following Lazarenko's flight from Ukraine, he left the faction and party (during May 1999) together with Yulia Tymoshenko'sAll-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland". He was re-elected to parliament in 2002 and 2006 as part of theBYuT.
On 4 February 2005, Turchynov was appointed and served as the first‐ever civilian head of theSecurity Service of Ukraine (SBU). With the approval of Turchynov as the head of the SBU, he dissolved the investigation team that was investigating theGeorgiy Gongadze case since 2002. According to the first deputy head of the Main Investigation Department of theProsecutor General's Office of Ukraine Roman Shubin, Turchynov ordered not to provide operational data on the Gongadze case to the investigation group of the Security Service of Ukraine.[27][28][29]
On 15 June 2005, after the SBU had started an investigation by Turchynov in May 2005, Tymoshenko charged thatDmytro Firtash and others, including hisNicosia, Cyprus-based Highrock Holdings had been central to over $1 billion stolen from Ukraine through hisTurkmenistan gas scheme involving bothEural Trans Gas andRosUkrEnergo. On 8 September 2005, Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko and subsequently, on 23 September 2005, the SBU investigation into the missing money was halted by direct order of Yushchenko according to Turchynov.[30][31][32][33]
In August 2007, Turchynov replied to the accusation that his stance onsame-sex marriage is typically conservative, "I do not agree. If a man has normal views, then you label him a conservative, but those who use drugs or promote sodomy, you label them a progressive person. All of these areperversions".[34]
In2012 he was re-elected into the Verkhovna Rada, on the party list of Batkivshchyna.[42] In the final days ofEuromaidan, on 21 February 2014 the Verkhovna Rada passed a law that reinstated the 8 December 2004 amendments of the constitution.[43] This was passed under simplified procedure without any decision of the relevant committee and was passed in the first and the second reading in one sitting by 386 deputies.[43] The law was approved by 140 MPs of theParty of Regions, 89 MPs of Batkivshchyna, 40 MPs ofUDAR, 32 of theCommunist Party, and 50 independent lawmakers.[43] According toRadio Free Europe, however, the measure was not signed by the then-PresidentViktor Yanukovych, who was subsequently removed from office.[44]
On 22 February 2014, he was elected as speaker ofVerkhovna Rada.[13] On 23 February 2014, Turchynov was designated as interimPresident of Ukraine following theimpeachment ofViktor Yanukovych[45] per the reinstated constitutional provisions of the 2004 amendments. On 25 February Turchynov assumed the (Presidential power of) command of theUkrainian Armed Forces.[15] A day earlier were also scheduledearly presidential elections on 25 May,[46] for which Oleksandr Turchynov did not register. On 27 February,Arseniy Yatsenyuk was appointed the new prime minister under acting president Turchynov.
In early March 2014,Vladimir Putin, President ofRussia, stated he did not regard Turchynov as the legitimate Ukrainian President.[47] Following attacks on law enforcement, security institutions and capture of government buildings, Turchynov offered for the unmarked militants with Russian flags to lay down arms and vacate government buildings for negotiations.[48] Upon refusal, he finally sanctioned a big scale anti-terrorist operation headed by theSecurity Service of Ukraine.[48] Earlier on 8 April 2014 another short-term anti-terrorist operation led by theMinistry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine freed up government buildings inKharkiv.[49]
On 13 April 2014, Russia confirmed that it began a large scale military exercise in theRostov,Belgorod andKursk Oblasts, on theborder with Ukraine, involving more than 8,000 troops and which would continue until the end of March.[50] In April 2014, Russia announced another military exercise in the same region (Southern Russia).[51]
On 14 April 2014, while talking on the phone with Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon, Turchynov asked for theUnited Nations's support regardingthe crisis in eastern Ukraine, to which the Secretary-General replied thatpeacekeepers may be sent in should Russia withhold its veto. Meanwhile, Turchynov issued a deadline to the pro-Russian insurgents to disarm and dismantle their barricades, but the deadline passed without incident.[52] Before he issued a deadline, which was scheduled for 9 am,[53] he tried to negotiate with insurgents and even proposed to hold referendum on the same day as elections which will be on 25 May. His proposition was questioned by journalists[which?] who feared that the referendum might be sabotaged by pro-Russia insurgents.[citation needed][48]Petro Poroshenko waselected President of Ukraine on 25 May 2014.[54][55][56][57][58] Poroshenko was sworn in as Ukrainian President on 7 June 2014, this ended the presidential powers of Turchynov.[16]
On 10 September 2014, Turchynov became founding member the new partyPeople's Front.[23] In an interview with theBBC, Turchynov admitted that in 2014, when the first volunteers went to war, he was personally giving them weapons, but not all were clean in the eyes of the law: "And I personally signed the orders for the weapons, many were worried about what would happen if they did not follow those orders with a weapons. Indeed, we didn't check anyone at that time, if they were convicted previously or not – whoever said that they are ready to defend the country, signed up, received weapons and went to the East of our country."[59][60][61] In an interview given toVICE, he declared concerning his decision: "If it happened again, I would do the same thing".[62] On 21 September 2014, he said that Russia doesn't admit that their soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. He also stated that Russia is the main aggressor, and that during the conflict, Ukraine had lost over 1,000 lives with hundreds missing. During the sameFacebook message, he compared the conflict to the butterflies, a metaphor to one ofRay Bradbury's works.[63] Turchynov was elected his party's faction leader on 27 November 2014.[64] On 16 December 2014, President Poroshenko appointed Turchynov as Secretary of theNational Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.[12][65] According to the social poll of the "Sofia" centre, in June 2017, only 0.9% of respondents said that they completely trust Turchynov, 9.5% trust him, 24.1% do not trust him, 57.4% do not trust him at all.[66][67] On 1 November 2018, Turchynov was included in the Russian sanctions list in connection with Ukraine's unfriendly actions towards citizens and legal entities of the Russian Federation.[68]
On 11 December 2018, in response to the fact that 66 city councils and 12 regional councils had adopted the term "gender" instead of "sex", he published on his website an article he wrote called "Neo-Marxism or a trip to the abyss".[69] In this article he drew a parallel between Marxists and "neo-Marxists", and declared the latter "offe[r] society a struggle for the rights of the new "oppressed", assigning to them the role of emancipated women, homosexuals, lesbians, transgender people, and others like that."[70]
In his article he also criticizedLGBT activists and compared the "invented subjects" ofgender studies to the academic degrees of "Scientific Communism" and "Marxist-Leninist philosophy". He also called for the restoration of the term "sex" instead of the term "gender" in the national registration where the term "gender" was in use.[70] In response to this, 160 church communities and 130 public organizations publicly supported his article.[69] In March 2019, at the All-Ukrainian Forum of the Family, Turtchynov declared he opposed the "hundreds of genders" in the Ukrainian legislation and declared his support for "eternalgospel values".[71]
On 17 May 2019, after theUkrainian elections, he resigned from his office as secretary of theNSDC; his resignation was accepted on 19 May.[citation needed] In June 2020, Turchynov became head of the2020 Ukrainian local elections headquarters of the partyEuropean Solidarity.[8] Turchynov stated he was "not interested in a parliamentary mandate or public positions, but to help the unification process and train quality staff of effective managers".[8]
On 10 September 2014, Oleksandr Turchynov published a letter in which he urged retailers to take a closer look at the products ofTarasove Dzherelo, a small producer ofmineral water. He proposed to conclude deals with that company. Some market experts assessed the actions of Turchynov aslobbyism.[72]
According to thejournalistic investigation, Turchynov'smother-in-law, Tamara Beliba, owns the largest data center in theBaltic states —MC-office. Beliba owns theEkonomikos Institutas company, which owns a data center located inKaunas,Lithuania. The total volume of investments was $200 million.[73][74][75] Tamara Beliba is also the owner of the company "Ekostilkom", which in turn owns a house near Kyiv with a size of 1,000 m2 with a plot of land of 0.5 hectares. Turchynov's mother-in-law is the owner of warehouses with a total area of 6,000 m2 in Kyiv on the Akademika Koroleva Prospect. Another company of Tamara Beliba owns three facilities with the size of more than 200 m2 each in the centre of Kyiv on Konovalets street.[76][77]
According to theUnited State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations of Ukraine, the entire business in the Turchynov family is executed on his mother-in-law Tamara Beliba, mother Valentina and wife Anna. The family is engaged in economic research, film production, providing communication services and building data centres. This business is related with economic research,film production, the provision oftelecommunications services anddata centers.[78][79]
On 1 May 2017, the journalistic investigation of the programOur money with Denis Bigus (channel24) proved the connection between Oleksandr Turchynov and people's deputy Ruslan Lukyanchuk with three large companies (Absolut Finance,Magnate andOctave Finance) that own 1,200 exchange points of 3,500 legalcurrency exchange offices in Ukraine. These points exchanged currencies withoutcash registers, which violates the requirements of the law, since in this case automatic tax reporting is not provided to theState Fiscal Service. All these companies are listed on the nominees — Oksana and Ilona Brodovskaya and Hryhoriy Pron'ko (Oksana's father). However, their connection with the joint business of Turchynov and Lukyanchuk was proved by journalists — Oksana and her husband Valentin Brodovsky were assistants of Ruslan Lukyanchuk during four convocations of the Verkhovna Rada.[80][81][82] Investigations on this subject were published in the Ukrainian media earlier.[83]
Oleksandr Turchynov's father-in-law Vladimir Beliba together with businessman Ihor Tynnyy opened in 2013 in the center of Kyiv a restaurant ofItalian cuisine "Montecchi v Capuleti". This was reported in May 2016 by the journalists ofNashi hroshi project.[84][85][86][87]
According to media reports, Turchynov is involved in establishment of the following companies: "Institute for Economic Reforms" LLC,[88] "Information Technologies of the 21st Century" CJSC, "Pharmacor" LLC, "ZET" LLC, "Europe-X" LLC, "Editorial board of Vecherniye Vesti newspaper" LLC, "VV" LLC, "SVV" LLC, "Janus" Real Estate Agency LLC.[89][90][91]
In June 2003, the Deputy Prosecutor General of UkraineViktor Shokin announced his intention to send the proposal to theUkrainian Parliament an idea to bringing to trial the deputies Oleksandr Turchynov,Stepan Khmara andMykola Rudkovsky. According to Shokin, the People's deputies were insulting and beating the staff of theLukyanivska Prison. Deputies demanded the release of Gennady Tymoshenko and Antonina Bolyura. They were incriminated with three cases of theCriminal Code: "Capturing state buildings", "Threat to law enforcement officers", and "Excess of power with the use of weapons and verbal insulting of law enforcement officers."[92][93][94]
On 13 September 2003, tax officials detained at the office of the "Fatherland" party Ruslan Lukyanchuk, one of the assistants of Oleksandr Turchynov. He was charged with involvement inillegal currency exchange. TheProsecutor General of UkraineSvyatoslav Piskun then stated that the detention of Turchynov's assistant was part of a planned process of initiating a criminal case. According to Piskun, about hundreds of thousands of illegally converted dollars were sent to the office of the "Fatherland" party.[95]
In February 2006, state prosecutors opened a criminal case against Turchynov and his SBU deputyAndriy Kozhemyakin for destroying a file aboutFBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive, organized crime bossSemyon Mogilevich, from the SBU archive. The case was dismissed four months later.[96]WikiLeaks documents mention Turchynov, then head of Ukraine's SBU, as having destroyed documents implicatingYulia Tymoshenko's alleged connections toMogilevich.[97]
According to theKomsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine newspaper referring to deputy mayor ofKyivLeonid Chernovetskyi, Mr. Turchynov is related to unlawful construction in the Landscape Alley (Peyzazhna aleya) district ofKyiv. In autumn of 2004 theMinistry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine signed an investment contract with JSCUkrainian Property (OAO "Ukrayinsʹke mayno") on the construction of an apartment building in this district. With this the share of the MFA in the project made just 20%. The Ministry actually became a cover for the businessmen.[98][99]
As of 1 January 2007, 91.1% of the JSCUkrainian Property shares belonged toEclad Invest Ltd. (USA), and 8.2% to Valery Kovalenko. Previously, the shares of JSCUkrainian Property belonged to JSCFinancial holding "L-Holding", the largest shareholder of which was JSCCentre of Financial Technologies. Oleksandr Turchynov owned 26.2% of the shares of this company.[98][99] On 23 April 2008, the Kyiv District Administrative Court ruled that Oleksandr Turchynov had no personal relationship with the construction of the Landscape Valley.[100]
In 2005, Oleksandr Turchynov ordered to organize an illegal wiretapping of the journalist ofSegodnya newspaper Oleksandr Korchinsky. This fact was made public at a press conference byViktor Shokin, former Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The telephone of the journalist was tapped from 25 June – 12 July 2005. Turchynov personally took this decision. The journalist's phone wasbugged without sanctions of the court.[101][102][103] On 14 March 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine have opened a criminal case on the fact of illegal wiretapping of senior officials. Most of these wiretapping took place in 2005, when Oleksandr Turchynov was the head of SSU.[104][105]
In August 2016, journalists of theEconomichna Pravda (Ukrayinska Pravda project) accused Oleksandr Turchynov of influencing the leadership of theState Special Communications Service of Ukraine (DSTSZI). Despite the introduction of the system of electronic declarations on the incomes of civil servants and officials, those declarations without a DSTSZI's security certificate could not have legal force in court cases. A number of analysts accused Turchynov of disrupting the launch of the e-declaration system.[106][107][108][109]
On 15 August 2016,Serhiy Kaplin, Secretary of the Committee for National Security and Defense of the Verkhovna Rada, published an open appeal to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and theProsecutor General demanding to confirm the attitude of Oleksandr Turchynov to privatearms manufacturers. Turchynov actively lobbies the entry of these manufacturers to the market.[110][111][112] Kaplin also demands the Prosecutor General to open cases against Turchynov andSerhiy Pashynskyi on the surrender ofCrimea andDonbas.[113][114]
In March 2017, former people's deputyOleksandr Shepelev accused Turchynov andRuslan Lukyanchuk of stealing and withdrawing $800 million from the state budget with the assistance of theInternational Monetary Fund. According to Shepelev, in 2009 Turchynov and Lukyanchuk "were taxed by the heads of ministries and state enterprises", and received money from them to the accounts of theEuropean Bank for Rational Financing (EBRD). There, hryvnias were converted into thecash dollars, which then were withdrawn tooffshores through the Baltic banks andshell companies. The largest of these companies wasFortex, owned by Lukyanchuk and registered in theUK. Turchynov urged theNABU to investigate the charges against him.[115][116][117]
According to the Ukrainian lawyer living in Russia and disgraced former First DeputyProsecutor General of UkraineRenat Kuzmin, the court orderedNational Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to initiate the criminal proceedings against Turchynov for theft and withdrawal of $800 million to offshore companies. The NSDC press service said that Kuzmin's publication contains false information that "Russian secret services are replicating in order to discredit the Secretary of the Turchynov Council." Turchynov later appealed to the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau with a request to conduct a check of the statements of the former members of the Yanukovych team hiding out inRussia that he withdrew $800 million from the state budget to the offshore.[118][119][120]
According to an electronic declaration, in 2019, Turchynov received₴410,690 (US$15,210) as salary. He received interest of ₴1.319 million (US$48,852) from bankdeposits. Another ₴250,000 formed an income from other sources. In bank accounts, Turchynov had ₴236,000, US$1,052,000, and about €10,000. He also declared US$675,000, €3,000, and ₴57,000 in cash.[123]
Turchynov has a collection of ancientBibles, paintings, as well ascopyrights to books and films. His spouse has declared ₴446,000 of income. Oleksandr Turchynov also declared a 2018TOYOTA LC 150 Prado car and a 2015LEXUS LX570 car.[123]
Turchynov also has three more award weapons - a revolver ofAlfa 3541 caliber.357 Magnum (30 April 2014), a pistol machine gunFort-226 (30 March 2015), and a semi-automatic pistolMauser C96 with 105 bullets.[125]
In May 2016, Minister of Internal Affairs of UkraineArsen Avakov confirmed that Turchynov was awarded the Maxim's machine gun model 1910 (PM M1910).[126][127]
^Sindelar, Daisy (23 February 2014)."Was Yanukovych's Ouster Constitutional?". Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty (Rferl.org). Retrieved25 February 2014.Yanukovych, however, failed to sign the measure.
1Presidents of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile.2 Chairman of the Ukrainian National Council.3During the Soviet period the republican leader was the 1st secretary of the party, while a head of state de jure was the chairman of the parliament's presidium.
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