Dmytro Tabačnyk

Dmytro Volodymyrovych Tabachnyk (, ; born 26 November 1963) is a Russian and former Ukrainian politician who served as the minister of education and science of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. Tabachnyk is among former Ukrainian officials who have had their assets frozen by EU and is wanted in Ukraine for embezzlement and abuse of office. As a fugitive, he was believed to be in Israel and Crimea.

Amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine Tabachnyk reappeared in public as a collaborator with Russia in Russian occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

Tabachnyk was a Member of Parliament from March 1998 through March 2003

In November 2002 through February 2005, he served as vice premier in the First Yanukovych Government.

He was forced to resign from Parliament because he illegally procured for himself the military title of colonel.

From 1997 to 1998 he was an advisor to President Kuchma.

In 2002–2005 he became vice-premier minister of Ukraine under Victor Yanukovych. During this period he was involved with the scandal of donating letters by Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky to the Ukrainian archive in Kyiv which had previously been stolen from the Lviv archives.

In March 2006, he was elected to the Supreme Council of Crimea as a deputy of the For Yanukovych! Bloc. On 17 March 2010, the Administration of the Ukrainian Catholic University appealed to the education community in Ukraine to come out publicly about the situation in the education field after the appointment of Tabachnyk as education and science minister. According to them "Tabachnyk has been openly and publicly humiliating the Ukrainian intelligentsia, as well as Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture, kindling hostility among the various regions of Ukraine, vindicating the human-hating Stalinist regime, which has been condemned alongside fascism for crimes against humanity by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe; he doubts the sacrifices borne by the Ukrainian people in the times of the Soviet totalitarianism". 5,000 people held a rally in Lviv in support of Tabachnyk's dismissal on 17 March 2010. Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, leader of For Ukraine!, stated during the rally that his party would work tirelessly to oust Tabachnyk from his post, and introduced a resolution asking the Ukrainian parliament to dismiss Tabachnyk. The initiative was supported by other opposition groups, including Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko. President Victor Yanukovych had campaigned on the promise to abolish testing in 2009. As late as 15 March 2010 his deputy, Hanna Herman, maintained they would be eliminated. Herman also stated Yanukovych had privately met with Tabachnyk on 15 March and put him on notice. “He had to promise the president to hide under lock and key his personal views and anti-Ukrainian statements and strictly follow the education policy approved by the parliament and the Cabinet of Ministers. If he breaches that agreement, the president will take an adequate decision”.

On 20 March 2010, the Ukrainian national television channel Inter made live sociological interrogation at prime time, asking respondents to answer a question if they are supporting Tabachnyk in position of Science and education minister or against him. The results were that 67% supported him in this position and 33% said that he had to resign. It being said that about 30,000 respondents voted.

A website was created to support Tabachnyk in position of Science and education minister. It contains an open letter to the President and Prime Minister of Ukraine "from representatives of intellectuals, mass media and the non-governmental organisations of Ukraine in support of Dmitry Tabachnyk on a post of the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine".

On 30 March a total of 202 lawmakers with 226 needed voted in favour of a bill asking for Tabachnyk's dismissal.

On 13 May 2010 Tabachnyk announced that Ukraine and Russia intended to develop a common textbook for history teachers.

In 2011 Tabachnyk was criticized for approving new schoolbooks on the history of Ukraine, which included a biography of then president Yanukovych, but failed to mention some aspects of Ukrainian history such as certain activities of the OUN or the proclamation of Carpatho-Ukraine, and replaced the term "Second World War" with "Great Patriotic War".

Tabachnyk was placed at number 11 on the electoral list of Party of Regions during the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

In 2013 the Ukrainian Ministry of Education removed leading figures in Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych and a number of Soviet dissidents from the list of "minimum necessary knowledge of graduates" and replaced them with Soviet military leaders and Communist Party of the Soviet Union party activists.

On 23 February 2014, just after the Revolution of Dignity, the Verkhovna Rada dismissed Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara and Education Minister Tabachnyk.

Russian invasion of Ukraine In November 2022, Tabachnyk was charged with treason for cooperating with the FSB and the Russian occupation administrations of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His property, including five plots and half of an apartment in Kyiv, were seized by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in January 2023.

On 4 February 2023, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revoked Tabachnyk's Ukrainian citizenship.

On 27 April 2023 information appeared on the website of the Russian political party United Russia that claimed that Tabachnyk was a member of this party and that he would be running for this party in the 2023 Russian regional elections that will also take place in the four occupied Ukrainian oblasts that were illegally annexed on 30 September 2022. Tabachnyk was stated to run for deputy in Russian occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast and was listed as being a "adviser to the head of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Central Committee."

In May 2023, the SBU announced that after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tabachnyk "conducted subversive activities against Ukraine with a representative of the Russian intelligence service". According to SBU, he took an "active part in organizing pseudo-referendums in the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia". They added that he carried out Russia's tasks of "reformatting" the educational and medical industries in the occupied territories to meet the needs of the aggressor country".

View of Ukraine's history Tabachnyk was loathed by opposition politicians for his view of Ukraine's history which includes the thesis that western Ukrainians are not really Ukrainian. In a 2009 article for the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Tabachnyk wrote: “Halychany (western Ukrainians) practically don’t have anything in common with the people of Great Ukraine, not in mentality, not in religion, not in linguistics, not in the political arena” “We have different enemies and different allies. Furthermore, our allies and even brothers are their enemies, and their ‘heroes’ (Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych) for us are killers, traitors and abettors of Hitler’s executioners.” considering it an invention of foreign historians for political motives.

Political views

Tabachnyk has advocated expanding the rights of Russian-language speakers and is loathed by some politicians and branded as being anti-Ukrainian.

According to Anders Åslund (in October 2012) Tabachnyk "could hardly care less about the real problems in Ukrainian education" but instead "His endeavor to sovietize Ukrainian historiography and promote russification attracts most attention". Åslund further argued that Tabachnyk's "greatest 'reform' had been to reduce ordinary school from the European standard of [year] 12 to [year] 11, seemingly inspired by the destruction instigated by the late Turkmenbashi". was born in 1940 and was an aircraft manufacturing engineer (i.e. aerospace engineer). His mother, Alla Viktorivna Glyebova, was Russian, and was a structural engineer. She was born in 1938.

Honours Табачник, Дмитрий Владимирович Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky 3rd class Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (28 October 1996). Grand Officer of Order of Merit (Portugal) (16 April 1998) Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland Order of St. Sava Medal "For Courage in a Fire" (USSR)