A month and a half has passed since the appointment of Svitlana Hrynchuk as the new head of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine. During this time, the leadership of the ministry has undergone personnel changes.
EcoPolitic has prepared for its readers a material about the officials who are now in charge of environmental protection in Ukraine.
At the time of Ruslan Strilets, as of 1.04.2024, there were 8 staff units in the leadership of the Ministry of Natural Resources:
- minister;
- Secretary of State;
- First Deputy Minister;
- Deputy Minister for European Integration;
- Deputy Minister for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitalization;
- three deputy ministers.
As of October 16, 2024, not all of these positions in the ministry have been filled. Let's figure out which of them are vacant.
1. Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine – Grinchuk Svetlana Vasilievna. We have collected basic information about her biography and career in this material.
Source: mepr.gov.ua.
2. State Secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources – Sakhnatskaya Oksana Andreevna . Appointed to the position on September 24.
Source: mepr.gov.ua.
She graduated from the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine with a degree in Law, the National Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine with a degree in Social Development Management, and the Ukrainian Institute for Stock Market Development with a degree in Finance.
Since 2001, she worked as a leading specialist in the litigation support department of the legal department, and later as head of the legal department of the State Commission for Securities and the Stock Market. From 2010 until her appointment to the Ministry of Natural Resources, she headed the apparatus of the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market.
3. First Deputy Minister – Kramarenko Elena Vladimirovna. Appointed to the position on October 4.
Source: mepr.gov.ua.
Prior to this, from May 13, 2022, she held the position of Deputy Minister in the department and was involved in the formation and implementation of public policy in the areas of environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment, state environmental control, as well as reform of the chemical safety system in Ukraine.
Earlier worked Deputy Director of the Department of Environmental Safety and Permitting and Licensing Activities – Head of the Department for Environmental Impact Assessment and Permitting and Licensing Activities of the Ministry of Ecology during the tenure of Ostap Semerak.
In total, he has 18 years of public service in the field of environmental protection, of which 6 years in senior positions in the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine.
The name of Elena Kramarenko appeared in a number of corruption scandals, including she was allegedly involved to a corruption case for UAH 200 thousand opened against the director of the department of environmental safety and licensing activities Sergei Lukyanchuk. Also former National park workers suspect her involvement in shady timber sales schemes.
4. The post of Deputy Minister for European Integration was vacant from October 4 to October 14 after Yevgeny Fedorenko resigned on October 4. He has held this post since April 25, 2023.
On October 15, the government appointed Svetlana Grinchuk as her new deputy for European integration. Olga Yurievna Yukhimchuk .
Source: mepr.gov.ua.
For her, her experience in the ministry is not new: in 2016-2018, she worked as the head of the department for implementing a system of trading quotas for greenhouse gas emissions and maintaining the registry of the Department of Climate Change and Ozone Layer Conservation. In 2022, Olga Yukhimchuk served as head of the climate policy and reporting department of the climate policy and ozone layer conservation department of the Department of Industrial Pollution Prevention and Climate Policy.
She came to her current position from the Government Office for Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. There she worked on environmental issues, climate change and Green Deal coordination.
5. Deputy Minister for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitalization Vlasenko Sergey Gennadievich kept his post. He was appointed to a leadership position in the ministry during the tenure of the previous minister – June 21, 2022.
Source: mepr.gov.ua.
In 2020 he worked First Deputy Head of the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine.
Before that, he was deputy chairman of the State Forestry Agency for six months. It was during his work in this post that the media found in his ownership 20 plots of elite land in the Kyiv region, acquired in June 2018. Before his appointment to the government of Denis Shmygal, Vlasenko was an adviser to the Minister of the Environment.
6. Deputy Minister – Kireeva Victoria Stanislavovna. Like Sergei Vlasenko, she retained her post, to which she was appointed on April 22, 2023.
Source: mepr.gov.ua.
She received specialized education as an ecologist and economist at the National Transport University. In 2012-2016 worked in various positions at Eco Expert LLC. Since April 2016, she began working at the Kyiv Regional State Administration. Until September 2020, she headed the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Kyiv Regional State Administration. Since September 2020, she has worked as director of the Department of Permit Licensing and Prevention of Industrial Pollution of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
7. Deputy Minister – Semenets Alexander Stepanovich. Appointed to the position on October 1.
Alexander Semenets has been working in the environmental field for more than 27 years. Has two higher educations: environmental and management. From 1997 to 2002 he worked at the State Department of Ecology and Natural Resources in Kyiv. He climbed the career ladder to the position of senior state inspector for environmental protection in Kyiv. After that, he worked for 4 years at the State Environmental Inspectorate of Ukraine. He was the chief state inspector of Ukraine for environmental protection. Has several years of experience working in the Ministry of Environment. Expert in waste management.
More information about the professional experience of Alexander Semenets can be found in our brief dossier.
8. The position of one more – third – deputy minister is vacant.
Earlier, on September 5, EcoPolitic reported that the new head of the Ministry of Natural Resources The Verkhovna Rada appointed Svetlana Grinchuk. October 1 as a new deputy in the Ministry of Natural Resources became Alexander Semenets. October 4 The Cabinet of Ministers appointed Elena Kramarenko for the position of First Deputy Minister of Environment Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine. October 15: vacant post of Deputy for European Integration in the Ministry of Natural Resources took Olga Yukhimchuk.
