Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko is a Ukrainian businessman and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.
90 Facts About Petro Poroshenko
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In 2018, Petro Poroshenko helped create the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, separating Ukrainian churches from the Moscow Patriarchate.
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Petro Poroshenko's presidency was distilled into a three-word slogan, employed by both supporters and opponents: armiia, mova, vira.
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Petro Poroshenko is a people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the European Solidarity party.
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Outside government, Petro Poroshenko has been a prominent Ukrainian oligarch with a lucrative career in acquiring and building assets.
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Petro Poroshenko's most recognized brands are Roshen, a large-scale confectionery company which has earned him the nickname of "Chocolate King", and his TV news channel 5 kanal, which he was forced to sell to comply with anti-oligarch legislation in November 2021.
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Petro Poroshenko is considered an oligarch due to the scale of his business holdings in manufacturing, agriculture and finance, his political influence from several stints in government prior to his presidency, and his ownership of an influential mass-media outlet.
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Petro Poroshenko's father, Oleksiy Petro Poroshenko, was an engineer and later government official who managed multiple factories in the Ukrainian SSR.
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Petro Poroshenko spent his childhood and youth in Tighina, where his father Oleksii was heading a machine building plant and where he learned Romanian.
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In 1989, Petro Poroshenko graduated, having begun studying in 1982, with a degree in economics from the international relations and law department at the Kyiv University.
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From 1989 to 1992, Petro Poroshenko was an assistant at the university's international economic relations department.
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The article observed that Petro Poroshenko remained one of the only two European leaders who owned a business empire of such scale, with Silvio Berlusconi of Italy being the other.
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Petro Poroshenko is likely to be worth much more, as the annual accounts published by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce only contain the book value of the shares, which is very likely to be lower than the market value.
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Petro Poroshenko has stated that upon beginning his political activity he passed on his holdings to a trust fund.
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Petro Poroshenko first won a seat in the Verkhovna Rada in 1998 for the 12th single-mandate constituency.
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Petro Poroshenko was initially a member of the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine, the party led by Viktor Medvedchuk and loyal to president Leonid Kuchma at the time.
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Petro Poroshenko left SDPU in 2000 to create an independent left-of-center faction and then a party, naming it Party of Ukraine's Solidarity.
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In December 2001, Petro Poroshenko broke ranks with Kuchma supporters to become campaign chief of Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine Bloc opposition faction.
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Petro Poroshenko was considered a close confidant of Yushchenko, who is the godfather of Petro Poroshenko's daughters.
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Petro Poroshenko was likely the wealthiest oligarch among Yushchenko supporters, and was often named as one of the main financial backers of Our Ukraine and the Orange Revolution.
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State prosecutors dismissed an abuse of power investigation against Petro Poroshenko the following month, immediately after Yushchenko dismissed Sviatoslav Piskun, General Prosecutor of Ukraine.
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Petro Poroshenko chaired the parliamentary Committee on Finance and Banking.
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Allegedly, since Petro Poroshenko claimed the post of Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament for himself, the Socialist Party of Ukraine chose to be part of the Alliance of National Unity because it was promised that their party leader, Oleksandr Moroz, would be elected chairman if the coalition were formed.
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Petro Poroshenko did not run in the September 2007 parliamentary election.
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Petro Poroshenko started heading the Council of Ukraine's National Bank in February 2007.
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Petro Poroshenko was appointed by the Verkhovna Rada on 9 October 2009.
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Petro Poroshenko supported Ukrainian NATO-membership, and said NATO membership should not be a goal in itself.
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In late February 2012, Petro Poroshenko was named as the new Minister of Trade and Economic Development in the Azarov Government; on 9 March 2012, President Yanukovych stated he wanted Petro Poroshenko to work in the government in the post of economic development and trade minister.
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On 23 March 2012, Petro Poroshenko was appointed economic development and trade minister of Ukraine by Yanukovych.
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Petro Poroshenko returned to the Verkhovna Rada after the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election after winning as an independent candidate in single-member district number 12 located in Vinnytsia Oblast.
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Petro Poroshenko did not enter any faction in parliament and became member of the committee on European Integration.
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In mid-February 2013, Petro Poroshenko hinted he would run for Mayor of Kyiv in the 2013 Kyiv mayoral election.
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Petro Poroshenko then launched and became leader of the National Alliance of freedom and Ukrainian patriotism "OFFENSIVE", which was renamed "All-Ukrainian Union Solidarity".
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Petro Poroshenko refused to join the Yatseniuk Government, nor did he join any of the two newly created parliamentary factions Economic Development and Sovereign European Ukraine.
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On 24 April 2014, Petro Poroshenko visited Luhansk, at the time not controlled by Ukrainian authorities.
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When it became clear he had won the election on election day evening Petro Poroshenko announced his "first presidential trip will be to Donbas", where armed pro-Russian rebels had declared the separatist republics Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic and control part of the region.
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Petro Poroshenko compared the armed pro-Russian rebels to Somali pirates.
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Petro Poroshenko called for negotiations with Russia in the presence of international intermediaries.
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Petro Poroshenko vowed to hold new parliamentary elections in 2014.
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Petro Poroshenko was inaugurated in the Verkhovna Rada on 7 June 2014.
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Petro Poroshenko promised an amnesty "for those who do not have blood on their hands" to the separatist and pro-Russia insurgents of the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine and to the Ukrainian nationalist groups that oppose them, but added: "Talking to gangsters and killers is not our path".
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Petro Poroshenko called for early regional elections in Eastern Ukraine.
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Petro Poroshenko warned that he had a "Plan B" if the initial peace plan was rejected.
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Petro Poroshenko proposed that Ukrainian remained the only state language of Ukraine.
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On 25 August 2014, Petro Poroshenko called a snap election to the Verkhovna Rada, to be held 26 October 2014.
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Petro Poroshenko said that these Rada deputies were responsible for "the [January 2014] Dictatorship laws that took the lives of the Heavenly hundred".
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Petro Poroshenko stated that many of the current MPs were "direct sponsors and accomplices or at least sympathizers of militant-separatists".
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Petro Poroshenko had pressed for the elections since his victory in the May 2014 presidential election.
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In 2015, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc was renamed in "Petro Poroshenko Bloc "Solidarity"".
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On 13 December 2014, Petro Poroshenko stated that he did not want Ukraine to become a nuclear power again.
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On 15 May 2015, Petro Poroshenko signed a bill into law that started a six months period for the removal of communist monuments and the mandatory renaming of streets and other public places and settlements with a name related to Communism.
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Petro Poroshenko believes that the communist repression and Holodomor of the Soviet Union are on par with the Nazi crimes of the 1940s.
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On 23 March 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accepted the resignation of billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky as governor of Dnipro region over the control of oil companies.
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Petro Poroshenko promised that he will fight against the Ukrainian oligarchs.
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In December 2018, President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the status of veterans and combatants for independence of Ukraine for the armed units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
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On 25 September 2017, a new law on education was signed by President Petro Poroshenko which says that the Ukrainian language is the language of education at all levels except for one or more subjects that are allowed to be taught in two or more languages, namely English or one of the other official languages of the European Union.
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On 15 May 2019, Petro Poroshenko signed the law "On provision of the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the State language".
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Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to create the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to comply with the requirements of the International Monetary Fund.
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Critics of Poroshenko stated he removed the jurisdiction of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine over records about off-the books payments to Paul J Manafort, who lobbied on behalf of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych, and served as campaign manager for Donald Trump during his first presidential campaign.
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On 11 April 2019, the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine was established and Petro Poroshenko signed the decree appointing the judges during an official ceremony.
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On 7 December 2015, Petro Poroshenko met with US Vice President Joe Biden in Kyiv to discuss Ukrainian-American cooperation.
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Petro Poroshenko met US President Donald Trump in June 2017; BBC News falsely accused him of paying Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen between 400,000 and 600,000 dollars to organize this meeting.
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The BBC ended up having to state the allegation was untrue, apologizing to Petro Poroshenko, deleting the article from its website, paying legal costs, and paying damages to Petro Poroshenko.
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In June 2014, Petro Poroshenko forbade any cooperation with Russia in the military sphere.
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At the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 26 June 2014 Petro Poroshenko stated that bilateral relations with Russia cannot be normalized unless Russia undoes its unilateral annexation of Crimea and returns its control of Crimea to Ukraine.
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On 26 August 2014, Petro Poroshenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Minsk where Putin called on Ukraine not to escalate its offensive.
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Petro Poroshenko responded by demanding Russia halt its supplying of arms to separatist fighters.
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Petro Poroshenko said his country wanted a political compromise and promised the interests of Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine would be considered.
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Petro Poroshenko stated that the day was "Ukraine's most historic day since independence in 1991", describing it as a "symbol of faith and unbreakable will".
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Petro Poroshenko saw the signing as the start of preparations for Ukrainian EU Membership.
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At his speech at the opening session of the new parliament on 27 November 2014, Petro Poroshenko stated "we've decided to return to the course of NATO integration" because "the nonalignment status of Ukraine proclaimed in 2010 couldn't guarantee our security and territorial integrity".
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On 29 December 2014, Petro Poroshenko vowed to hold a referendum on joining NATO.
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On 2 February 2017, in an interview with Funke Mediengruppe, Petro Poroshenko announced he was planning a referendum on whether Ukraine should join NATO.
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Petro Poroshenko was criticized by Committee to Protect Journalists for signing a decree which banned 41 international journalists and bloggers from entering Ukraine for one year, being labeled as threats to national security.
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In October 2015, Petro Poroshenko visited the Kazakh capital of Astana, during which he told President Nursultan Nazarbayev that his country was Ukraine's "window to Asia" and vice versa.
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Two days after the passing of the anti-oligarch law, which seeks to curb the influence of Ukraine's wealthiest individuals, Petro Poroshenko sold the TV channels Priamyi and 5 Kanal.
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On 20 December 2021, Petro Poroshenko was accused of state treason, aiding terrorist organizations and financing terrorism due to allegedly organizing the purchase of coal from separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine together with pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.
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Petro Poroshenko denied the allegations, calling them "fabricated, politically motivated, and black PR directed against [Zelenskyy's] political opponents".
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On 25 February 2022, amid the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko appeared on TV with a Kalashnikov rifle together with the civil defense forces on the streets of Kyiv.
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On 12 March 2022, on the 17th day of the Russian invasion, Petro Poroshenko personally handed over two civilian pickup trucks labeled "Bandera-Mobiles", in honor of controversial WWII Ukrainian Stepan Bandera, over to members of the 206th Territorial Defense Battalion of Kyiv.
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Petro Poroshenko wanted to attend the spring session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Vilnius as a member of the Ukrainian delegation.
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Petro Poroshenko set up an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands during the peak of the war in Donbas.
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Petro Poroshenko said that he had done nothing wrong, and the legal firm, Avellum, overseeing the sale of Roshen, his confectionery company, said that "any allegations of tax evasion groundless".
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Petro Poroshenko became a grandfather on the day of his presidential inauguration, 7 June 2014.
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Petro Poroshenko has financed the restoration of its buildings and monasteries.
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Petro Poroshenko has been nicknamed "Chocolate King" because of his ownership of Roshen, a large confectionery business.
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Petro Poroshenko said it was necessary to realize the consequences of martial law for the country:.
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On 5 February 2015, in his interview with the Spanish El Pais newspaper, Petro Poroshenko stated that he would introduce martial law in the event of an escalation of the situation in Donbas, but that such a decision would limit democracy and civil liberties, as well as threaten the development of the economy.
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On 29 May 2015, Petro Poroshenko invited former President of Georgia and his friend Mikheil Saakashvili to help with conducting reforms in Ukraine and granted him Ukrainian citizenship.
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On 26 July 2017 Petro Poroshenko issued a decree stripping Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship, without providing any reason.