Petro Poroshenko

Poroshenko's father, (1936–2020), was an engineer and later government official who managed multiple factories in the Ukrainian SSR.

Little is known about his mother, Yevhenia Serhiyivna Hryhorchuk (1937–2004), but a Ukrainian newspaper said she was an accountant, who taught at a vocational and technical school of accounting.

He also spent his childhood and youth in Tighina (Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, now known as Bender and under de facto control of the unrecognized breakaway state Transnistria), where his father Oleksii was heading a machine building plant and where he learned Romanian.

In his youth, Poroshenko practiced judo and sambo, and was a Candidate for Master of Sport of the USSR.

Despite good grades, he was not awarded the normal gold medal at graduation, and on his report card he was given a "C" for his behavior.

After getting into a fight with four Soviet Army cadets at the military commissariat, he was sent to army service in the distant Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko (Петро Олексійович Порошенко, ; born 26 September 1965) is a Ukrainian oligarch and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.

Petro Poroshenko was born on September 26, 1965, into an ethnic Ukrainian family in Bolhrad, a primarily Bulgarian town in Ukraine's southwestern Odesa Oblast.

In 1984, Poroshenko married a medical student, Maryna Perevedentseva (born 1962).

Their first son, Oleksiy, was born in 1985 (his three other children were born in 2000 and 2001).

In 1989, Poroshenko graduated, having begun studying in 1982, with a degree in economics from the international relations and law department (subsequently the Institute of International Relations) at the Kyiv University.

From 1989 to 1992, Poroshenko was an assistant at the university's international economic relations department.

While still a student, he founded a legal advisory firm mediating the negotiation of contracts in foreign trade, and then he undertook the negotiations himself, starting to supply cocoa beans to the Soviet chocolate industry in 1991.

At the same time, he was deputy director of the 'Republic' Union of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs, and the CEO "Exchange House Ukraine".

In 1993, Poroshenko, together with his father Oleksii and colleagues from the Road Traffic Institute in Kyiv, created the UkrPromInvest Ukrainian Industry and Investment Company, which specialized in the confectionery and automotive industries (as well as in other agricultural processing later on.) Poroshenko was director-general of the company from its founding until 1998, when in connection with his entry into parliament he handed the title over to his father, while retaining the title of honorary president.

Between 1996 and 1998, UkrPromInvest acquired control over several state-owned confectionery enterprises which were combined into the Roshen group in 1996, creating the largest confectionery manufacturing operation in Ukraine.

His business success in this industry earned him the nickname "Chocolate King".

Poroshenko's business empire also includes several car and bus factories, Kuznia na Rybalskomu shipyard, the 5 Kanal television channel, as well as other businesses in Ukraine.

Poroshenko's brother, Mykhailo, older by eight years, died in a 1997 car crash under mysterious circumstances.

The estimate of his assets was set at US$979 million, a 20% growth, and his ranking increased from 9th to 6th wealthiest person in Ukraine.

The article observed that Poroshenko remained one of the only two European leaders who owned a business empire of such scale, with Silvio Berlusconi of Italy being the other.

From 2007 until 2012, he headed the Council of Ukraine's National Bank.

Poroshenko served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2010, and as the Minister of Trade and Economic Development in 2012.

In March 2012, Forbes placed him on the Forbes list of billionaires at 1,153rd place, with US$1 billion.

He was elected president on 25 May 2014, receiving 54.7% of the votes cast in the first round, thus winning outright and avoiding a run-off.

During his presidency, Poroshenko led the country through the first phase of the war in Donbas, pushing the Russian separatist forces into the Donbas Region.

He began the process of integration with the European Union by signing the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement.

Poroshenko's domestic policy promoted the Ukrainian language, nationalism, inclusive capitalism, decommunization, and administrative decentralization.

Although not the most prominent in the list of his business holdings, the assets that drew much recent media attention, and often controversy, are the confectionery factory in Lipetsk, Russia, that became controversial due to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014–present), the Sevastopol Marine Plant (Sevmorzavod) that has been confiscated after the 2014 Russian forcible annexation of Crimea and the media outlet 5 kanal, particularly because of Poroshenko's repeated refusal to sell an influential media asset following his accession to presidency.

At this university he was friends with Mikheil Saakashvili who he would appoint as Governor of the Odesa Oblast (region) in May 2015 and who is a former President of Georgia.

As of May 2015, Poroshenko's net worth was about US$720 million (Bloomberg estimate), losing 25 percent of his wealth because of Russia's ban of Roshen products and the state of the Ukrainian economy.

According to the annual ranking of the richest people in Ukraine, published in October 2015 by the Ukrainian journal Novoye Vremya and conducted jointly with Dragon Capital, a leading investment company in Ukraine, president Poroshenko was found to be the only one from the top ten list whose asset value grew since the previous year's ranking.

According to Poroshenko (and Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust) since becoming President of Ukraine he has relinquished the management of his businesses, ultimately (in January 2016) to a blind trust.

In 2018, Poroshenko helped create the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, separating Ukrainian churches from the Moscow Patriarchate.

His presidency was distilled into a three-word slogan, employed by both supporters and opponents: armiia, mova, vira (English: military, language, faith).

As a candidate for a second term in 2019, Poroshenko obtained 24.5% in the second round, and was defeated by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Poroshenko is a people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the European Solidarity party.

Outside government, Poroshenko has been a prominent Ukrainian oligarch with a lucrative career in acquiring and building assets.

His most recognized brands are Roshen, a large-scale confectionery company which has earned him the nickname of "Chocolate King", and his TV news channel 5 kanal, which he was forced to sell to comply with anti-oligarch legislation in November 2021.

He is considered an oligarch due to the scale of his business holdings in manufacturing, agriculture and finance, his political influence from several stints in government prior to his presidency, and his ownership of an influential mass-media outlet.