Yuriy Lutsenko

Lutsenko's mother is Vira Mikhailivna (born 1936), a veterinarian.

His father was Vitaliy Ivanovych Lutsenko (15 March 1937 – 4 June 1999), who was elected people's deputy of Ukraine in 1994 and 1998, and secretary of the Central Committee of Communist Party of Ukraine.

Yuriy Vitaliyovych Lutsenko (Юрій Віталійович Луценко; born 14 December 1964) is a Ukrainian politician (whose most recent post was Prosecutor General of Ukraine from 12 May 2016 until 29 August 2019 ), Ukrainian Interior Minister and member in the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Lutsenko earned his degree in electronic engineering in 1989 from Lviv Polytechnical Institute.

From 1991, Lutsenko was a long-term member of the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU).

In the 1998, Lutsenko unsuccessfully ran for the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) as number 58 on the list of the SPU and Peasant Party of Ukraine Bloc and in Ukraine's 152th electoral district from the same block.

Lutsenko first gained public fame as one of the leaders of the Ukraine without Kuchma campaign, which followed the Cassette Scandal of 2000.

He was also one of the "faces of the Orange Revolution".

Lutsenko has been a long serving people's deputy in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament); first elected in 2002 and reelected in 2007 and 2014.

Lutsenko was Minister of Internal Affairs in the two cabinets of Yulia Tymoshenko and in the cabinets of Yuriy Yekhanurov and Viktor Yanukovych.

Lutsenko became a people's deputy in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) following the 2002 Ukrainian parliamentary election (as third on the election list of SPU).

Lutsenko belonged to the pro-European faction akin to social democratic parties in the rest of Europe, rather than a post-Soviet oldfashioned socialism.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs is the Ukrainian police authority, and Lutsenko became the first civilian minister in February 2005.

Lutsenko is also a former leader of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, and a former leader of its faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament).

Lutsenko became Minister of Internal Affairs in the first Tymoshenko Government of Yulia Tymoshenko appointed on 4 February 2005.

As a minister, Lutsenko refused to run in the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election on his party list.

However, he has run for both the Kyiv City Council and the Rivne Oblast Council simultaneously in the lists of the Socialist Party – "to make the point", as he explained.

Having won these seats, Lutsenko resigned from both in favor of his Minister's position as the Constitution of Ukraine prohibits occupying positions in the legislative and executive branches of the government at the same time.

Lutsenko suspended his membership of the SPU in the summer of 2006 as a result of the party leader Oleksandr Moroz's entering into a coalition with the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Party of Regions of former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

When the coalition of the Party of Regions, Communists, and defected Socialists began to take shape, Lutsenko stated flatly that he would refuse to continue serving as the minister in a future government formed by these parties.

However, after President Viktor Yushchenko agreed to allow the forming of the cabinet in exchange for several political concessions including the ability to pick the Minister of Interior, Lutsenko stated that the president asked him personally to remain as the minister, and he would do so.

Lutsenko was formally dismissed by the Verkhovna Rada on 1 December 2006.

The same month, Lutsenko created the Civil Movement "People's Self-Defense".

In the September 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election Lutsenko was reelected to the Verkhovna Rada as the number 1 on the list of the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc as a non-party member.

On 18 December 2007, Lutsenko again became minister of Internal Affairs, when Yulia Tymoshenko was again elected Prime Minister of Ukraine.

In early May 2009, Lutsenko became entangled in a scandal concerning his behaviour during a visit to Germany.

According to the German newspaper Bild, Oleksandr Lutsenko, his son, was detained at Frankfurt Airport by the German police in a state of acute alcohol intoxication.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry dismissed these allegations.

On 12 May 2009, Yuriy Lutsenko sent in his resignation from the post of interior minister.

In his letter of resignation, the minister described the incident that happened in Frankfurt, and stressed that the German police had officially apologized to the Ukrainian delegation for this incident; but that despite this, German mass media disseminated false publications, which were later re-published by Ukrainian media.

Lutsenko was confident that a dirty campaign had been waged against him in Ukraine.

In 2010, Lutsenko was charged with abuse of office and forgery by Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Pshonka, in what was widely viewed as political retaliation for having investigated one of Yanukovych's cabinet members four years earlier.

In 2012, he was sentenced to four years in prison, but was pardoned by Yanukovych in 2013.

In 2016, he became Ukraine's chief prosecutor under President Petro Poroshenko, during which time he was criticized for undermining Ukraine's newly established National Anti-Corruption Bureau.

He was dismissed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019; Trump later tried unsuccessfully to pressure Zelenskyy to reinstate him.

Following the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Lutsenko joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and has taken part in several battles since.

On 5 July 2023 Lutsenko announced that he would no longer serve in the Ukrainian Armed Forces due to an established disability.

According to him, he would "work towards victory as a volunteer".

Lutsenko was born in Rivne.

While in office, Lutsenko became a central figure in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, in which he worked with U.S. President Donald Trump to try to find incriminating information on Trump's then-presumed opponent in the 2020 United States presidential election, Joe Biden.