Oleh Lyashko

Oleh Valeriiovych Liashko (Олег Валерійович Ляшко; born 3 December 1972) is a Ukrainian politician, journalist and soldier who was a long time member of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the Radical Party.

Liashko was born in Chernihiv on 3 December 1972, but grew up in the village of Lozovivka in Starobilsk Raion, where his mother lived.

When Liashko was two years old, his parents separated, and his mother was forced to send him to an orphanage.

Liashko studied in three boarding schools: Yablunivska, Komarovska, and Borznianska.

He worked as a shepherd at the Progress collective farm.

After completing his secondary education he went to college to study as a tractor operator.

From 1990 till 1992 Liashko was a correspondent and head of the newspaper Young Guard (based in Kyiv).

In 1992 he became an editor of Commerce Herald of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations of Ukraine.

On 21 June 1993 Liashko was arrested and indicted for grand funds embezzlement.

On 9 December 1994, the Criminal College of the Kyiv City Court found Liashko guilty according to articles 86–1, 191, and 194 part 3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The court found Liashko guilty of embezzlement of 1,300,000 roubles personally, and 1,100,000 roubles collectively with accomplices.

Liashko was sentenced to six years in prison and sequestration of the property.

The Supreme Court reduced the time to four years' imprisonment.

Liashko was released in May 1995 under an amnesty agreement due to the "50th anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany".

In 1995 and 1996, Liashko was an editor at the newspapers Politika and Pravda Ukraine.

In August 1996, he became Chief Editor of the newspaper Politika.

In 1998 he graduated from the Faculty of Law H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University.

In 1998, the criminal case was erased.

Liashko himself claims the case was payback for his critical journalism.

He claims that his case was falsified by deputy minister of Internal Affairs Veniamin Bartashevych.

In 1999, the publication was closed by decision of the Moscow District Court in Kyiv for "divulging state secrets".

From 2000 till 2006, Liashko was chief editor of Freedom (for "Newspaper "Policy").

Liashko was elected as a deputy to the Verkhovna Rada in 2006, in the 2007 parliamentary election for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (YTB), in the 2012 parliamentary election and 2014 parliamentary election for his Radical Party.

Prior to this, he was a journalist.

Liashko was elected as a deputy to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) in the 2006 parliamentary election for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (YBT) (No. 26 in the party list).

During this term he served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on the organization of the Supreme Council of the Parliamentary Committee on Rules, Ethics and maintenance of the parliament.

In the 2007 parliamentary election, he was re-elected into the Verkhovna Rada for YBT (No. 29 on the party list).

He was Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Budget.

On 18 October 2010, he was expelled from the YBT faction "for cooperating with the majority coalition".

YTB had previously stated that a video leaked a week before would not be the reason for excluding of Liashko from the faction.

On 8 August 2011, Liashko was elected the new party leader of the Ukrainian Radical Democratic Party during its third party congress.

On the same day, the party changed its name to Radical Party of Oleh Liashko (shortened to the Radical Party).

In the 2012 parliamentary election, he was re-elected to the Verkhovna Rada after winning single-member constituency number 208 in the Chernihiv Oblast (as candidate of the Radical Party) with 55.57% of the votes.

During this term he was Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance and Banking.

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, he received 8.32% of the vote.

In a September 2015 interview, Liashko stated that shepherding was his summer job back in 1987-88: he used to travel to Luhansk Oblast by train and earn up to 300 roubles per summer (around US$500 at the time).

After that Liashko would buy clothing and shoes in Starobilsk.

When he graduated from boarding school, Liashko had around 2,000 roubles in savings, the value of which was completely wiped out by post-Soviet inflation.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Liashko lost his parliamentary seat.

Since the 2022 escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War Liashko has joined the Ukrainian armed forces.