Andriy Senchenko

Andriy Vilenovich Senchenko (Ukrainian: Андрій Віленович Сенченко; born 1 November 1959) is a Ukrainian politician, who served as a member of the Ukrainian parliament between 2006 and 2014.

Senchenko was born to ethnic Ukrainian parents in Simferopol, Crimean Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. He graduated from the Baltic State Technical University in St. Petersburg in the field of aviation engineering in 1983. From 1980 on, he was involved in works on the Baikal-Amur Railway project in Siberia. Until the Collapse of the Soviet Union, he held several secretary posts in the Komsomol of Ukraine.^[1]

In 1993, after Ukraine regained independence, Senchenko became the Deputy Prime Minister of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and was entrusted with economical affairs. During the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election, he was elected into the Ukrainian parliament, in which he served as a people's deputy until late 2014.^[2]

During the Revolution of Dignity, when pro-European protesters encamped on multiple sites in the center of Kyiv, Senchenko served as the "commander" of the October Palace, which was occupied by Svoboda and Batkivshchyna supporters. Following the subsequent violent police crackdowns on Maidan Square, which left over 100 people dead, Senchenko was the only opposition MP, who opposed signing the a peace agreement between the incumbent pro-Russian Yanukovych administration and the pro-European opposition, which was represented by Vitaly Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleh Tyahnybok.^[3]

As the result of Yanukovych's departure from Ukraine, Russian troops invaded and occupied Crimea, before unilaterally annexing the peninsula, after conducting a highly disputed referendum, which was vastly considered to be a sham vote.^[4] Following the swift takeover, Senchenko supported a bill, which would ban the transfer of water to Crimea through the North Crimean Canal, stating that most of the water was used for industrial and agricultural purposes, while drinking water was maily extracted by drilling.^[5][6] He was also involved in negotiating the release of multiple Ukrainian POWs and journalists, who were captured during the Russian invasion of Crimea.^[7]

In September 2014, he was appointed as the chairman of an investigative committee of the Verkhovna Rada, which was tasked with investigating the Massacre of Ilovaisk.^[8]

He is married to his wife Tetyana. The couple has a son named Dmytro, who was born in 1981.