Valentyn Nalyvaichenko is a Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee for Ukraine’s integration into the EU.
Born in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, he graduated with honors from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a Master’s degree in Law and a Master’s degree in Linguistics.
During his diplomatic career from 1994 to 2006, Mr. Nalyvaichenko held senior positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. He served as the Ambassador of Ukraine to Belarus, Consul General in Washington, D.C., USA, First Secretary in the Ukrainian Embassy in Helsinki, Finland. From 2004 to 2006 he served as a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. As a Deputy Minister, he made great progress in visa regime liberalization and combating illegal migration.
Mr. Nalyvaichenko was elected to the Parliament in 2012. As an MP in 2012-2014, he was the First Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs. He drafted laws on election transparency, accountability of the government and combatting corruption.
Mr. Nalyvaichenko twice served as the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2015. He led the implementation of the Euro-Atlantic strategy of Ukraine and initiated a joint Working Group “Ukraine-NATO” on security reform. Mr. Nalyvaichenko made significant efforts aimed at declassification and digitalization of the KGB and communist regime archives, making them available to the public. These archives contained secret documents on crimes against humanity committed by the communists and the KGB, including Holodomor-Genocide crimes (Ukrainian Famine) of 1932-33.
After the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Mr. Nalyvaichenko was appointed for the second time as the Head of the SBU. He immediately acted to freeze and recover stolen assets from Yanukovich-era corrupt government officials. Subsequent to this, he successfully led operations to prevent the incursion of Russian forces and Russia-backed separatists into Ukraine and launched wide-ranging counterintelligence and counterterrorism reforms.
Mr. Nalyvaichenko started his civil activity shortly after he was terminated from his post as the Head of the SBU for refusing to stop investigations into the top corruption and embezzlement. As a politician
and a civil activist, he led the Anti-Corruption Movement (founded in 2015) and the Justice Civil and Political Movement (founded in 2016). In 2019 Mr. Nalyvaichenko competed in the presidential and parliamentary elections.
In August 2019, he was elected as a member of Parliament from the political party the All-Ukrainian Union “Batkivshchyna” *1* 2.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko is committed to fighting for a corruption-free and just Ukraine. He views the Ukraine — US and Ukraine – EU strategic partnership as the keystone for Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy. He is actively working on Ukraine’s full-scale membership in the EU and NATO.
