Mykhailo Volynets

Mykhailo Yakovych Volynets (; born 30 October 1956) is a Ukrainian trade unionist and politician currently serving as a People's Deputy of Ukraine on the electoral list of Batkivshchyna party since 2019, having previously been a deputy from the electoral list of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc between 2002 and 2012, barring a brief period in 2007. He is the chairman of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, one of Ukraine's two trade union federations, as well as the Independent Trade Union of Ukrainian Miners.

Early life and career Mykhailo Yakovych Volynets was born 30 October 1956 in the village of , in Ukraine's central Vinnytsia Oblast under what was then the Soviet Union. From 1974 to 1975 he studied mining in the city of Dymytrov (now Myrnohrad), and he served in the Soviet Army as a conscript from 1975 to 1977 before becoming an officer in the Soviet military reserves.

After being demobilised, Volynets worked at A. Stakhanov coal mine, near Krasnoarmiisk (now Kapitalna coal mine, near Pokrovsk) from 1977.

Trade unionism In 1984, Volynets travelled to Wales, where he was part of an international group of miners from the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy supporting the 1984–1985 United Kingdom miners' strike. Speaking to striking miners, Volynets recounted in 2024 that he came to the realisation that he "lived in a country without truth", and resolved to establish a trade union in Ukraine similar to the British National Union of Mineworkers. Upon his return to Ukraine, Volynets was appointed head of the trade union committee at Stakhanov coal mine in 1985.

Volynets was a prominent figure during the 1989–1991 Ukrainian revolution and the 1990s Donbas miners' strikes, leading the first committee of striking workers in Krasnoarmiisk. Internet news publication has claimed that Volynets was a KGB agent during the revolution, being planted by the Fifth Directorate of the Ukrainian KGB in order to control the strikes, claiming that he used the codename "Woland". Volynets stated that this codename was used by the Security Service of Ukraine (, abbreviated SBU) during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, which he says surveilled him and accused him of seeking to overthrow the government. Volynets was head of the A. Stakhanov Inter-Regional Association of Trade Unions, a consortium of striking unions, in 1991, and was appointed as chairman of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (, KVPU) in 1997. in 2003.

In his capacity as head of the KVPU, Volynets lent support to protesters during Euromaidan, in contrast to the opposing Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (, FPU), which largely refused to support or oppose the uprising. Volynets argued that the aims of trade unions were fundamentally different from those of politicians in opposition to the government of Viktor Yanukovych, with the former advocating increased wages (especially the minimum wage) and the abolition of neoliberal reforms to the Ukrainian pension system, while the latter primarily sought snap elections to remove Yanukovych and constitutional reform. during which Volynets accused the Ministry of Energy of failing to pay ₴2 billion worth of wages to coal miners. Volynets and the KVPU are closely aligned with the International Labour Organization. Academic Denys Gorbach has criticised Volynets's leveraging of his ILO connections, as well as his general role in the KVPU and the NPHU, arguing that Volynets has centralised power around himself to the detriment of union organisation. According to members of the FPU who infiltrated the KVPU, Volynets has conversely argued that without his leadership the KVPU would collapse.

During the Russo-Ukrainian war, Volynets lent support to a 2023 strike by the GMB trade union at a factory producing Storm Shadow and Brimstone missiles in Beith, Scotland, urging employers to negotiate immediately. Volynets has provided humanitarian support to villages destroyed by the Russian military during the war.

Political career alt=Head shot portrait of Volynets, aged 46. He is wearing a black suit over a blue shirt, with a striped tie and a lapel pin depicting the flag of Ukraine. Volynets first ran in the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election on the electoral list of the minor Party of Spiritual, Economic and Social Progress, and was not elected. He also unsuccessfully ran in a 2000 by-election in (located in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast) as an independent. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has described Tymoshenko as Volynets's patron. Further investigations by RFE/RL and Pershyi accused Volynets of illegally concealing the source of ₴3 million used to purchase a flat in Pecherskyi District, Kyiv and two parking spaces in a 2020 declaration of income submitted to the Verkhovna Rada. In response to questions from journalists, Volynets claimed that the source of the funds was "the woman, with whom [he] lives" and that it was "optional" to include her income in the declaration. It is unclear whether this statement meant his wife or another woman, though RFE/RL cited unnamed anti-corruption experts as noting that Volynets was legally obligated to provide the assets of his common-law wife if they were not separated. Volynets later also claimed that he had purchased the flat with savings, though these were also undeclared.

The Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office requested that the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine order the confiscation of Volynets's flat as state revenue and evidence in an investigation of Volynets falsifying his income declaration, a measure that the High Anti-Corruption Court agreed on 28 July 2021 to consider the next month.

On 22 July 2025, Volynets voted in favour of , which was criticised by Chesno for "effectively destroying" the independence of the NABU and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office by placing their activities at the discretion of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.