Oleg Tsarev

Oleg Anatolyevich Tsaryov (; ; born 2 June 1970) is a Ukrainian and Russian businessman, politician and former separatist official in eastern Ukraine.

Tsaryov is a former People's Deputy of Ukraine elected for the Party of Regions in 2002, who was expelled from the party on 7 April 2014.

Biography

Early life Tsaryov was born 2 June 1970 in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union.

Tsaryov graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1992 with a degree in Applied Physics.

Election to national parliament Tsaryov became a People's Deputy of Ukraine (народний депутат України) in the 2002 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

In 2005 Tsaryov became head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional branch of Party of Regions.

And again on the same list but now placed 114th in the 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election. He was elected with 45.08% of the vote. On 29 March a Party of Regions convention supported Mykhailo Dobkin nomination as a presidential candidate. On 7 April 2014 the political council of that party expelled Tsaryov from the party. On 14 April, Oleg Tsaryov was beaten by a mob after an interview in the ICTV building in Kyiv. The beating was denied by some, though press agencies published videos of the mob and photos of Oleg Tsaryov half-naked with bruises. After this beating he stated "I am against a third party interfering in the affairs of Ukraine. Until we learn to listen to each other, Ukraine will stand no chance".

Tsaryov withdrew his presidential candidacy on 29 April. After the elections Tsaryov refused to recognize the election as legitimate; as he claimed "it was a choice only of half of Ukraine".

On 20 May 2015 Tsaryov announced the termination of the Novorossiya confederation. He stated this was done because the confederation did not comply with the Minsk II accords.

In 2018 Ukrainian media suspected that Tsaryov was living in Russia, probably in Russian annexed Crimea.

He was sanctioned by the UK government in 2014 in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was conducting a "special military operation in Donbas"; this announcement was followed by a large scale invasion of Ukraine. The United States intelligence community named Tsaryov as a possible Kremlin supported choice to lead a pro-Russian puppet Ukrainian government. On the (first) morning of the invasion Tsaryov declared "as promised, the denazification operation has begun."

On 15 March 2022, Russian channel RT released an interview with Tsaryov in which he claimed he was in Ukraine and providing humanitarian aid to Ukrainian territory under control of Russian troops. Tsaryov addressed Vilkul as "used to be my fellow party members" and claimed that Vilkul had "always taken a pro-Russian stance".

On 2 April 2022 Russian forces gave up its attempts to gain control over Kyiv, and thus the possibility for creating a puppet Ukrainian government, when it abandoned its Kyiv offensive.

After the visit of Boris Johnson to Kyiv on April 10, Tsaryov suggested shooting down airplanes with foreign politicians.

On 14 October 2025, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree stripping Tsaryov of Ukrainian citizenship.

Assassination attempt Tsaryov was allegedly shot in annexed Crimea on the night of 26–27 October 2023. Vladimir Rogov, a pro-Russian politician in occupied Ukraine, claimed a day later that Tsaryov was transferred to a hospital in a "very serious" condition.

A message on Tsaryov's Telegram channel on 7 November 2023 indicated that he was not killed. Later that month, Tsaryov appeared on live television broadcasts on Russia-24, proving that he was still alive.

Family life Tsaryov is married to Larissa (born in 1968) and has a daughter (born in 1999) and son (born in 1995), who both study in the United Kingdom. He has another daughter, born in 2003.

In December 2022 Tsaryov's brother Mykhailo was convicted for "terrorism" after being accused of preparing a series of explosions at strategically important objects in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast for an alleged promise to appoint him Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast if the province would be occupied by Russia.

Political views

In his election program for the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election Tsaryov wrote: "I marched in the miners' columns in Kyiv in 2004 against the "orange" disorder. I fought against fascists and nationalists of all stripes. I have always advocated Ukraine's non-aligned status, I am opposed to joining NATO. I stand for friendship with Russia, the Russian language and our great history - the story of Zhukov and Gagarin…"

In November 2013 Tsariov demanded a criminal investigation into the activities of United States Department of State lead TechCamp in Ukraine because he believed it was engaged in "preparations for inciting a civil war" because during training "instructors share their experience of Internet technologies, which are aimed at shaping public opinion and enhancing the protest potential and which were used to organize street protests in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Syria".

Tsaryov was one of the most ardent supporters a violent dispersal of the (2013–2014) Euromaidan. Tsaryov was pleased with the so-called anti-protest laws adopted in January 2014, stating that it was good that these laws made non-governmental organizations that accept foreign funds register as "foreign agents" because such funds only benefited the United States.