Oleksandr Turchynov (31 March 1964-) was Prime Minister of Ukraine from 4 to 11 March 2010 (succeeding Yulia Tymoshenko and preceding Mykola Azarov) and from 22 to 27 February 2014 (succeeding Serhiy Arbuzov and preceding Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and President of Ukraine from 23 February to 7 June 2014 (succeeding Viktor Yanukovych and preceding Petro Poroshenko).
Biography[]
Oleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union in 1964, and he worked in the steel industry, as a Komsomol propagandist, and as an advisor to Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma both during his private sector days and during his premiership. Turchynov became a close ally of fellow Dnipropetrovsk resident Yulia Tymoshenko, and he cofounded the social democratic Hromada party in 1994 before being elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 1998. After party cofounder Pavlo Lazarenko was embroiled in scandal, Turchynov joined Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna party, and he served as Director of the Security Service (SBU) in 2005. Turchynov placed second at the 2008 Kyiv mayoral election, and he served as acting Prime Minister between the fall of Tymoshenko's government on 4 March 2010 and the formation of a new government on 11 March. In 2014, following the Euromaidan revolution, he became acting Prime Minister for five days in February 2014, acting President from February to June 2014, and Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada from February to November 2014. He formed his own conservative People's Front party in 2014, and, as President, he was forced to deal with Russia's annexation of Crimea and the secession of the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. In December 2014, he became Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, serving until May 2019; in June 2020, he became one of the managers of the headquarters of Petro Poroshenko's European Solidarity party.