Oleksiy Mulyarenko

Oleksiy Mulyarenko (; born 15 October 1976) is a Ukrainian politician. He most notably served as Governor of Rivne Oblast from 2016 to 2019 under President Petro Poroshenko. Before entering politics, he worked in the private sector of Ukraine and became head of the construction-materials company Stal-M. He also served as secretary of the Rivne City Council prior to his governorship.

Early life Mulyarenko was born on 15 October 1976 in the city of Rivne, which was then part of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. His father, Vitaliy, works in construction, specifically for fire-retardant treatment of wooden structures. After graduation, he worked as head of a production site at the company "Met-Expo", and just a few months later he became the deputy director of the local branch in Lutsk for "Met-Expo". He then worked as an entrepreneur in the field of armoured doors until 2006, when he became Director of Stal‑M LLC.

Simultaneously, he became a coordinator for the charity project "Our Children", "Save Lives", and "Our Heart for Children!". Afterwords, he was appointed chairman of the Rivne branch for UDAR, which he did until 2014.

During the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, he attempted to run for a seat as a People's Deputy of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc for single mandate electoral district 153, but was not chosen. Soon after, though, he became an assistant-consultant to the MP Vitaliy Chuhunnikov until Chuhunnikov was appointed as Governor of Rivne Oblast. In 2017, during an interview with Uryadovyi Kurier, he stated that decentralization was the oblast's top priority alongside foreign investments, as he wished to diversify the industrial base beyond major Soviet-era enterprises. He also significiantly improved energy efficiency, and the oblast became ranked in Ukraine for doing so. He also alleged in 2017 that there were attempts to destabilize Rivne after protestors blocked the regional administration building.

On 19 May 2019, he rewrote a letter of resignation to be approved by the government regarding the post of governor. He was formally dismissed from the post on 24 June 2019, and soon after he announced his candidacy for the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election as an independent candidate, but was again not elected. He has since attempted to run repeatedly for a membership again in the Rivne City Council as a member of the Strength and Honor party, but has so far failed to win an election.

Personal life He was formerly married to Olena Vladyslavivna, an entrepreneur in metal products manufacturing. Together they had three children: Andriy, who took over as director of Stal-M from Oleksiy in 2016 and is linked to the National Corps party, Ivan, and Ariana. He later remarried to Natalia Mulyarenko (née Firko), who was the former head of the Volyn brarnch of the UDAR party and a co-founder of STD GROUP RIVNE. Together they have one son, Oleksiy, and Natalia has a step-son from her previous marriage, Yuriy.