Oleh Tiahnybok

Oleh Yaroslavovych Tyahnybok (, born 7 November 1968) is a Ukrainian politician and far-right activist who is the leader of the Svoboda political party.

Biography Early life Tyahnybok was born in the city of Lviv to a family of doctors and is a doctor himself. His father, Yaroslav Tyahnybok, a Merited Doctor of Ukraine, was a distinguished sports doctor, chief physician of the Soviet national boxing team, and a former boxer himself who achieved the title of the Master of Sports of the USSR. Oleh's great-grandfather was a brother of Lonhyn Tsehelsky, a politician in the West Ukrainian People's Republic. Tyahnybok states that he remembers searches conducted by the agents of the KGB in his family's apartment.

After secondary school, Tyahnybok enrolled into the Lviv Medical Institute and received part-time medical jobs as a corpsman and nurse, but after the second year was drafted to the army. After returning to the institute, he initiated the creation of the Med Institute Student Brotherhood - the first step in his life as a civil activist. Tyahnybok graduated from the institute in 1993 as a qualified surgeon (as he sometimes mentions, majoring in urology). In 1994, 25-year-old Tyahnybok was elected to the Lviv Oblast Council, and in 1998 he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada.

Political career In October 1991 Tyahnybok became a member of the Social-National Party of Ukraine. He is characterised as representative of Ukraine's far right. From 1994 until 1998, Tyahnybok served as a member of the Lviv Regional Council. In 1998, Tyahnybok was first elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) as a member of Social-National Party of Ukraine;

On 20 July 2004 Tyahnybok was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction after he made a speech in the Carpathian Mountains at the gravesite of a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. "[You are the ones] that the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine fears most The prosecutor's office initially filed criminal charges for inciting ethnic hatred, but later withdrew them for lack of evidence. Since that time Tyahnybok has won nine court cases in that regard. Court decisions have recognized that the criminal case was raised unlawfully, and that the actions of TV-channel "Inter" (which showed the footage of Tyanybok's speech) as well as of the Head of the Derzhkomnatsmihratsia Hennadiy Moskal were recognized as ones that insult the honor and dignity of Oleh Tyahnybok and caused him moral damage. The actions around that issue led to creation of the "Program in defense of Ukrainians". Tyahnybok stated in 2012 "this speech is relevant even today" and "All I said then, I can also repeat now".

Since February 2004 Tyahnybok has headed the Svoboda political party.

Tyahnybok stood as a candidate for President of Ukraine in the 2010 presidential election representing the All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" party. He received 352,282 votes, or 1.43% of the total. He received most of his votes in the Galician oblasts — Lviv Oblast, Ternopil Oblast and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast — and his vote share in this region amounted to five percent of the total ballots cast. In the second round, Tyahnybok did not endorse a candidate. He did present a list of some 20 demands that second-round candidate Yulia Tymoshenko would have had to fulfil first before gaining his endorsement - which included publicizing alleged secret deals Tymoshenko had with Vladimir Putin and ridding herself of what he called Ukraine-haters in her close circles.

During the 2010 Ukrainian local elections Tyahnybok's party won between twenty and thirty percent of the votes in Eastern Galicia where it became one of the main forces in local government.

During the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election Tyahnybok was re-elected (he was top candidate on his party list) to the Verkhovna Rada when his party won 38 seats. Tyahnybok was elected leader of the party's parliamentary faction.

In June 2013, Tyahnybok and another Svoboda leader were barred from entering the U.S. for their open antisemitism, according to the Kyiv-based newspaper Segodnya. In December 2013 US Senator John McCain visited Kyiv where he met with and shared a platform with Tyahnybok.

In March 2014 Russia launched a criminal case against Tyahnybok, and some members of Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence for "organizing an armed gang" that had allegedly fought against the Russian 76th Guards Air Assault Division in the First Chechen War.

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election he received 1.16% of the vote. In the October 2014 parliamentary election Tyahnybok was again first on the election list of his party; since the party came 0,29% short to overcome the 5% threshold to win seats on the nationwide list he was not re-elected into parliament.

In 2014 he met then Vice President Joe Biden on a visit to the White House.

On 14 October 2018, Tyahnybok announced he would not take part in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election but that his party had instead decided to nominate Ruslan Koshulynskyi as the candidate of nationalist political forces. In the election Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the votes.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Tyahnybok was placed first on the joined list of Svoboda with National Corps, the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh and Right Sector. But in the election they won 2.15% of the votes, less than half of the 5% election threshold, and thus no parliamentary seats via the national party list.

Political positions

Tyahnybok believes that a "Muscovite-Jewish mafia" (using pejorative terms for both Russians and Jews) controls Ukraine and has attacked what he says is the "criminal activities of organized Jewry in Ukraine". In 2012 international human rights organization The Simon Wiesenthal Center placed Tyahnybok fifth in its list of the top 10 antisemites and haters of Israel, based on his previous comments regarding Jews in Ukraine.

Tyahnybok has praised controversial far-right Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera saying in 2015 that the "current government came to power using Bandera’s slogans, so it has to follow his ideas". He also praised the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists for having fought "Moscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state".

Tyahnybok regards Russia as Ukraine's biggest threat.

Tyahnybok wants to introduce an "ethnicity" section into Ukrainian passports, start a visa regime with Russia, and require Ukrainians to pass a Ukrainian language test to work in the civil service.

Tyahnybok wants to re-establish Ukraine as a nuclear power.

Tyahnybok was voted Person of the Year for 2012 by readers of the country's leading news magazine, Korrespondent.