BIO

Ukrainian politician, lawyer and local government official. In 2020-2021 he served as Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Temporarily Occupied Territories. From 2021 to 2023 he was Minister of Defense of Ukraine.

He graduated from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv with a degree in law. In 1994, he qualified as an attorney. In the early 1990s, he co-founded a brokerage firm, and in 2000 he took up a law practice, which he ran as part of various law firms.

In 2008 he won a seat as an alderman on the Kyiv city council, and in 2014 he successfully ran for re-election. In the same year, he became deputy mayor of Kyiv and secretary of the city council. From 2016 to 2018, he served as deputy chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration for local government affairs.

In 2018, he returned to the practice of law. He was also a member of the Supreme Judicial Council for two years. In 2019, President Volodymyr Zelenski appointed him to the tripartite commission for resolving the Donbas crisis.

In March 2020, he assumed the positions of deputy prime minister and minister for temporarily occupied territories in the then-formed government of Denys Shmyhal. In November 2021, he was dismissed from these positions, and later in the same month appointed Defense Minister.