Bondarenko, Elena Anatolyevna

Education

Elena Bondarenko was born on May 26, 1974 in Makeevka, Donetsk region, in the family of a miner and a nurse . In 1991 she entered the Faculty of History at Donetsk State University , and in 1993 she also graduated in absentia with a degree in journalism, from which she graduated in 1996 . In 2004 she additionally graduated from the Faculty of Administrative Management of the Donetsk State Academy of Management .

Political career

Since 1997, Bondarenko took up political journalism. She worked in the regional office of the TV channel “Inter” - the New Donbass Broadcasting Company , where she organized weekly reviews of political events in the region “Labyrinths of Politics” and “Political Chronicles”. In 2001, the regional organization of the Green Party invited Bondarenko to become its public press secretary, and after a few months, Boris Kolesnikov , who was elected chairman of the Donetsk Regional Council, invites her to her team. First, she works as his assistant, and then heads the press service created at the regional council.

In the parliamentary elections of 2006, Bondarenko became a people's deputy on the list of the Party of Regions (No. 125). She worked in the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information, headed the subcommittee on advertising, then became the first deputy chairman of the Committee. She was a member of the temporary investigative commissions of the Verkhovna Rada to investigate the death of Georgy Gongadze and verify the facts of corruption and abuse of official position by individual officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 2007, at the early parliamentary elections, she headed the communications department of the central election headquarters of the Party of Regions. Re-elected MP in the list of the Party of Regions (№ 145). She works again on the Freedom of Speech and Information Committee. Supervises the subcommittee on television and radio broadcasting.

She was the author of the bill abolishing the mandatory 50 percent quota for broadcasting musical works by Ukrainian authors on air of television and radio stations ^[1] .

In 2012 she was again elected to the Verkhovna Rada. In the same year, she made an accusatory speech addressed to the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information and the representative of “ Batkivschyna ” Andrei Shevchenko , accusing him of abuse of authority, forgery of documents and the collapse of the Committee’s work. ^[2] After which the parliament voted for his resignation.

She acted as the author of the draft law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Regulating the Telecommunications Sphere”, which exempts operators and telecommunications providers from the obligation to obtain a license to provide Internet access services. Ukrainian media called this initiative “an attempt to solve the political crisis peacefully”

Member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine .

In May 2011, Elena Bondarenko was elected President of the Association of Content Holders and Content Providers, a public organization that declared its program goal to develop the content and pay-TV market in Ukraine, protect the interests of authors, their intellectual rights, and help meet the growing demand of content consumers ( viewers, listeners, readers, users ^[3] ).

From September 26, 2014 to March 2015 - the head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian media holding UMH ^[4] .

After Euromaidan, she took part in Russian political shows where she criticized the new authorities of the country ^[5] .

Since November 2016 - the head of the public organization “Center for Freedom of Speech”, engaged in helping prisoners of conscience and political prisoners of Ukraine and promoting freedom of speech in this country ^[6] .

Supporter of neutral, non-aligned status of Ukraine, as well as the introduction of two state languages: Russian and Ukrainian. Supports the idea of ​​developing and strengthening the rights of local governments.

He speaks critically about the state of journalism due to its subjectivity and lack of professionalism ^[7] .

For a long time, she was one of the key speakers of the “Party of Regions” ^[5] , spoke strongly against Euromaidan and supported “the laws of January 16 ^[5] ”.

On February 20, 2014, during the acute phase of the conflict on the Euromaidan , an interview with E. A. Bondarenko ^[8] was published on the website of the German publication Spiegel Online . In her, she called the actions of the police insufficiently tough, and when asked by a journalist that some demonstrators had been shot in the head, she replied that there were no peaceful demonstrators left in the square, but only vandals, arsonists and armed extremists. On February 25, Bondarenko stated that her words were severely distorted by the journalist during the translation, and the text of the interview was not sent to her for reading before publication, as she hoped for the journalism's professionalism and reputation of the publication ^[9] . She claims that when asked about the death of the protestors from snipers, she replied that “she doesn’t know how to proceed” and that “violence is not the way out” ^[10] . Spiegel Online journalist Benjamin Bidder commented on this statement on the personal facebook page. According to him, E. A. Bondarenko repeated several times that the police acted insufficiently rigidly (was operating not hard enough), and also that assistant E. A. Bondarenko had read the interview and agreed to publish it.

The annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation is the result of actions by the Ukrainian authorities, who refused to engage in dialogue with the inhabitants of the peninsula ^[11] .

During the presidential election in Ukraine in 2019, she spoke in support of the candidacy of Alexander Vilkul ^[12] .

Married. Spouse, Andrei Yurevich Bondarenko (b. 1969 ), was a deputy of the Donetsk Regional Council. In 2006, he was appointed Head of the Emergencies Ministry in the Donetsk region ^[13] ; in 2010, he became Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations Nestor Shufrich ^[14] . In 2012, he was Director of the Department of Financial and Economic Policy and Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Energy and Coal ^[5] . There is a daughter Pauline ( 1999 p), son Michael ( 2010 b.).

Awarded the Ukrainian Order of Merit, III degree ^[15] .

In 2007, Elena Bondarenko in the “100 Most Influential Women of Ukraine” rating from the magazine “Focus” received 39th place ^[16] .

• Elena Bondarenko on the website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Neopr.) .
• Elena Bondarenko on Facebook
• Elena Bondarenko on Twitter
• Bondarenko Elena Anatolyevna. Biography on the site Focus (Neopr.) . Archived December 4, 2012.