Anatoliy Hrytsenko
Date of birth: 25.10.1957
Anatoliy Stepanovich Grytsenko - Minister of Defense of Ukraine (2005-2007), People's Deputy of Ukraine of the VI and VII convocations, until September 2019 - head of the Civic Position party. Reserve colonel. Candidate of Technical Sciences (1984).
Place of birth, education. Born in the village of Bagachivka, Zvenyhorod district, Cherkasy region. After the 8th grade of school, Grytsenko entered the Suvorov Military School in Kyiv. In 1979, he graduated from the Kyiv Higher Military Aviation Engineering School. In 1993 - the Foreign Languages Institute of the US Department of Defense, in 1994 - the operational-strategic faculty of the US Air Force University, in 1995 - the Academy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Career. During his 25-year military career, he served in combat units, worked as a lecturer at a military higher education institution, held staff positions in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, headed the Department of Military Security and Building Issues of the Research Center of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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Grytsenko is a reserve colonel, candidate of technical sciences, author of over 100 scientific papers published in Ukraine, Belgium, the Netherlands, the USA, Germany, and Switzerland.
After completing his military service, he worked as the head of the analytical service of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. From December 1999 - president of the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research named after A. Razumkov. Additionally, from February 2000 - freelance consultant to the committee on national security and defense issues of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and from November 2000 - member of the Public Council of Experts on Domestic Political Issues under the President of Ukraine. In 2004, Grytsenko worked at Viktor Yushchenko's election headquarters, actively participating in the drafting of the program of the opposition candidate for the presidency.
Grytsenko is a three-time head of the defense department. He received his first appointment to this position in February 2005 in Yulia Tymoshenko's government. Then he headed the department in Yuriy Yekhanurov's Cabinet. On August 4, 2006, appointed head of the Ministry of Defense in Viktor Yanukovych's government by the Verkhovna Rada at the president's quota of Yushchenko. The second civilian Minister of Defense in Ukraine (after Valeriy Shmarov).
In the early parliamentary elections of 2007, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada under No. 4 of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine - People's Self-Defense bloc.
2012-2014 - People's Deputy of Ukraine of the VII convocation, elected by the party Batkivshchyna list (No. 3). Member of the parliamentary committee on combating organized crime and corruption.
On January 14, 2014, Anatoliy Grytsenko filed a withdrawal statement from the Batkivshchyna faction, 'due to the inability to influence decision-making.'
Leader of the Civic Position party.
In 2010 and 2014, he ran for the presidency of Ukraine.
In the 2014 Verkhovna Rada elections, he headed the list of the Civic Position alliance (Anatoliy Grytsenko), which failed to pass into parliament, ranking 10th with 3.10% of the vote.
On January 15, 2019, the Central Election Commission registered Grytsenko as a candidate in the presidential elections.
In the 2019 early parliament elections, he led the election list of the Civic Position party. As a result, in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada, the Civic Position party failed to overcome the 5% electoral threshold.
Until September 21, 2019, he was the head of the Coordinating Council of the Civic Position party. Since September 21, 2019, the new leader of the Civic Position party has been Volodymyr Hirnyak, who at that time was the deputy head of the Lviv Regional Council.
Views and assessments. As head of the Ministry of Defense, he was a consistent supporter of Ukraine's accession to the European Union and NATO. However, this did not hinder his attempts to maintain and restore mutually beneficial relations between the military-industrial complexes of Ukraine and Russia. Grytsenko is against holding a nationwide referendum on the country's accession to the North Atlantic Alliance. He believes this issue should be decided by the highest political leadership - the Verkhovna Rada, the president, and the government. He advocates for the full professionalization of the Ukrainian army and for its complete material support by business structures (based on public tenders). He declares and tries to demonstrate European approaches in the activities of the defense department - in particular, the transparency and accountability of the army to society.
After the scandal regarding the education of his colleague - Minister of Justice Roman Zvarych - and the subsequent 'provocative' proposal of Prime Minister Tymoshenko to publish the diplomas of all ministers on the Cabinet website, Grytsenko was the first to publish photocopies of his diplomas on the webpage of his ministry.
At the end of 2006, Ukrainian society witnessed a conflict between Grytsenko and the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine headed by Oleksandr Medvedko. The Minister of Defense did not agree with the conclusions of the GPU's board concerning the state of affairs in the army (from here the text is cut off)