Kostenko, Yuri Ivanovich

Born on June 12, 1951 in the village of Novaya Obodovka, Vinnitsa Region, Ukrainian SSR, in the family of Ivan Ivanovich (1924-1996), an engineer at a sugar factory, and Lyudmila Mikhailovna (1922-1985), a teacher ^[1] .

Education

In 1973 he graduated from the Zaporizhzhya Engineering Institute , after which he got a job as an engineer at the Kiev Institute of Electric Welding named after Eugene Paton . Subsequently, he became a junior researcher, then a senior engineer, and in 1982 he entered graduate school at the same institute. After graduating from graduate school in 1985, Kostenko worked as a researcher in the laboratory of new technological processes at the above-mentioned institute.

Policy

Immediately after the creation of the People's Rukh of Ukraine (NRU) in 1989, Kostenko became a member of it and began a quick climb up the party ladder. In March 1990, he was elected People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine from the Red Army (No. 22) single-member constituency (55.97% of the vote in the second round). Since 1991, he was already the head of the Kiev regional organization of the NRU.

In October 1992, Kostenko was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection of Ukraine, in connection with which he left the post of head of the regional organization of the NRU.
In March 1994, Kostenko was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament for the second time. This time, he again ran for the representative of the NRU from the Red Army constituency and won 52.19% of the vote in the second round.

On July 3, 1995, Kostenko was appointed for the second time as Minister of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety of Ukraine, since in 1994 he was dismissed as Minister. Kostenko held the ministerial chair until May 8, 1998. At the same time, he was a member of the Council of the SBU and other state security bodies, and in 1997-2000. He was a member of the profile commission under the President of Ukraine .

In the parliamentary elections in March 1998, Kostenko spoke at number 5 of the NRU's electoral list, as a result of which he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for the third time. On May 30, 1998, he was elected deputy head of the NRU.

However, Kostenko soon became the initiator of the split in the NRU. Together with a group of his supporters, Kostenko held a congress on February 28, 1999, which they called the Tenth All-Ukrainian Assembly of the NRU, at which he was proclaimed the head of the party. In contrast to these actions, the NRU held its congress on March 7, 1999, at which the authority of the party leader Vyacheslav Chernovol was confirmed, and Kostenko lost his post as deputy head of the NRU. Thus, he formed the new parliamentary faction of the NRU, which included the majority of the members of the NRU. However, at the end of the year, a new name had to be adopted for the faction, since the CEC forbade Kostenko to run for president of Ukraine as a candidate from the NRU, since Gennady Udovenko was the candidate from the NRU.
Thus, the future head of the Ukrainian People’s Union (since 2003, the Ukrainian People’s Party ), participated in the 1999 presidential election - as a non-partisan candidate. On them, he took sixth place out of thirteen, gaining 570,623 votes (2.17%). Nevertheless, it was a big victory for Kostenko, since he overtook the candidate from the NRU Gennady Udovenko.

At the beginning of 2002, the Ukrainian people's ruch Kostenko joined the block of parties "Our Ukraine" (NU) Viktor Yushchenko . Thus, in the March 2002 parliamentary elections , he spoke at No. 4 of the NU election list.

From 2002 to 2006, Kostenko was a member of the Permanent Delegation of Ukraine to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe .

Having broken with Our Ukraine in March 2005, Kostenko created at the end of that year his own electoral bloc, which was called the Ukrainian National Bloc Kostenko and Ivy. Since the bloc lost the parliamentary elections in March 2006, Kostenko did not go to parliament either.
On September 30, 2007, Kostenko took part in the parliamentary election No. 16 on the electoral list of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense Party bloc and was once again elected to the Verkhovna Rada.

In 2012, Yuri Kostenko resigned as chairman of the Ukrainian People’s Party and suspended membership in it ^[2] .

On May 31, 2016, the Ukrainian Pravda online edition published the “black bookkeeping” of the Party of Regions for 6 months of 2012 ^[3] . The documents contain the surname and initials that coincide with the surname and initials of the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Yury Ivanovich Kostenko, and also the name of the party "Our Ukraine" is indicated. In addition, the documents indicate the received funds in the total amount of USD 1,614,191 and the dates of receipt ^[4] are listed - September 14 and 28, 2012, October 3, 2012.

On the same day, the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine from the faction of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc, Yuri Kostenko, said he denied receiving funds from the Party of Regions . "This is not true (receiving money from PR)," he said. At the same time, according to him, Ukrainian politics has always been financed by large capital, regardless of what political forces it is. “We have been negotiating with business representatives to receive financial support in the elections,” he said.

• Second wife since 1994, Irina Pereshilo - correspondent of the Kiev bureau Radio Liberty, journalist. ^{[1] [5]}
• Son Rostislav Kostenko (born in 1980) is a specialist in international information. He speaks English. ^[one]
• the wife of the son of Bogdan (born 1980) ^{[6] the} daughter of the former leader of the NRU, Boris Tarasyuk ^[7] .
• grandson Ivan ^[8]

Yuri Kostenko is a master of sports in mountaineering . In 1987, he won first place at the Ukrainian Mountaineering Championship, in 1988 he conquered Lenin Peak (7,165 m), the second largest peak in the Pamirs . In the same year, the route of the 6th (highest) category of difficulty to the summit of Ak-Su ( Pamir-Alai ) was named after Kostenko. ^[9]

• Participant of rescue operations in Spitak during the 1988 earthquake in Armenia .
• In 1982-1989 - Chairman of the Republican Speleotourism Council of the Ukrainian SSR . ^[ten]

• Dossier on Yuri Kostenko - LIGA.
• Personal site of Yuri Kostenko
• Official website of the Ukrainian People's Party