Andriy Vilenovych Senchenko (; born 1 November 1959) is a Ukrainian politician, who served as a member of the Ukrainian parliament between 2006 and 2014.
Early life and education
Senchenko was born to ethnic
Ukrainians 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.
Political career
Early career
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
Verkhovna Rada, in which he served as a people's deputy until late 2014.
Euromaidan activism and Crimean blockade
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.
As the result of Yanukovych's departure from Ukraine, Russian military invaded and occupied Crimea, before unilaterally annexing the peninsula, after conducting a highly disputed referendum, which was vastly considered to be a sham election.
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.
