Oleksiy Honcharenko

Oleksiy Oleksiyovich Goncharenko (Олексій Олексійович Гончаренко; born in Odesa, 16 September 1980) is a Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian parliament, member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, President of the PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons.

From 1999 until 2001 Goncharenko worked in the Odesa emergency medical station.

In 2002 he graduated with honors from Medical University, but chose a political career over a medical one.

In 2002, at age 21, he ran unsuccessfully for the Odesa City Council of the District in the village Tairove.

After that he worked as an assistant for a deputy of the city council.

From 2002 Goncharenko was a student at Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow, Russia (Graduate School of Financial Management).

He graduated from the academy in 2005, receiving a degree in economics.

In 2005 he was elected chairman of the Odesa city organization of the party Soyuz.

In 2006 and 2010 he was elected to the Odesa City Council for Party of Regions.

During the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election he was a candidate in majority district 133 (in Odesa) lost to Ihor Markov with 20.6% of the votes (Markov gained 26.6%).

Before Euromaidan, Goncharenko was a member of the Party of Regions.

In 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the party list of Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

On 19 February 2014 after the first deaths of the Euromaidan-protests Goncharenko wrote the statement on his withdrawal from the Party of Regions.

In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election he was elected into the Ukrainian parliament for Petro Poroshenko Bloc placed number 40 on the party list.

He became deputy head of the faction.

On 1 March 2015 Goncharenko was arrested by Russian police during Nemtsov Memorial March.

According to Goncharenko when in detention he was beaten and deprived of medical and legal help.

Goncharenko was released from prison the next day but he promised to sue Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

He was included in the list of sanctions of the Russian Federation

Since 2015, Oleksiy Goncharenko has been a member of the Permanent Delegation of the Verkhovna Rada to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Throughout all these years, he sharply criticised Russia for violating human rights.

On 9 October 2018, Oleksiy Goncharenko spoke at a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in large rubber gloves.

He said that without gloves it would be "unsafe to shake hands and touch door handles", hinting at the accusations of Russia in the poisoning of Skripals.

He repeatedly raised the issue of human rights violations in Belarus and the illegal actions of the Lukashenko regime.

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe supported the creation of a special group that would be able to monitor and follow the situation in Belarus following Olekii's many statements on the issue.

Belarus is not a member of the Council of Europe, therefore it does not have its own delegation there but Goncharenko actively promotes the topic of sanctions against the dictatorial regime of Lukashenko in Belarus and works towards the state's democratisation.

During the spring session in PACE in 2022, he actively advocated the creation of an international tribunal that would investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

As a result, PACE called for the urgent establishment of such a tribunal soon afterwards.

Goncharenko opposes the participation of Belarusian and Russian athletes in the Olympics in Paris.

Actively supported and promoted the resolution on this issue in PACE.

In January 2024, Goncharenko was appointed chairman of the PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons.

After the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Oleksii continued to fight Russian propaganda, which Goncharenko opposed to throughout all 8 years of the war.

He began to actively cooperate with dozens of international media in order to bring the truth to the world about the real situation in Ukraine, as well as to draw direct attention to the necessary support measures that Western countries can provide.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Goncharenko was reelected as an independent candidate in single-seat constituency 137 (Podilsk).

Goncharenko is a son of former mayor of Odesa Oleksiy Kostusyev.

His parents divorced when he was three years old.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Goncharenko was reelected as an independent candidate in single-seat constituency 137 (Podilsk).

Goncharenko is a member of the European Solidarity faction in the Verkhovna Rada.

Since 2019, he has opposed the return of the Russian delegation to work in PACE.

During his speeches in the Parliamentary Assembly, he criticised Moscow for human rights violations in the temporarily occupied Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, fought against Russian propaganda and narratives that the Kremlin planted through its delegates in PACE.