Yatseniuk, Arsenii [Яценюк, Арсеній; Jacenjuk, Arsenij], b 22 May 1974 in Chernivtsi, Chernivtsi oblast. Lawyer, economist, banker, civil servant, and politician. Yatseniuk worked in law and banking until 2001, when he was appointed minister of the economy for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. He was next invited by the governor of Odesa oblast to be vice-governor. In 2003, thanks to the patronage of Serhii Tihipko, he became deputy head of the National Bank of Ukraine and soon succeeded Tihipko as its head. From there he advanced to become minister of the economy of Ukraine (September 2005 to August 2006) under Prime Minister Yurii Yekhanurov. After briefly serving as head of the presidential secretariat as well as presidential representative to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Yatseniuk was appointed minister of foreign affairs by President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko in March 2007.
In the pre-term elections to the Supreme Council of Ukraine in September 2007, Yatseniuk appeared as no. 3 in the party list of Our Ukraine—People’s Self-Defence, was duly elected, and subsequently became speaker of the assembly. Following the parliamentary crises of that year, he resigned in November 2008, and announced the transformation of his Front for Change movement into a full-fledged national political party led by himself.
Yatseniuk contested the January 2010 presidential elections, placing fifth out of eighteen candidates with 7 percent of the vote—between Serhii Tihipko (13.1) and Viktor Yushchenko (5.5) in the first round. This disappointing showing may have been due to a campaign depicting him uncharacteristically as a potential strongman concocted by a hired team of ‘political technologists’ from Moscow. His best showing was in Chernivtsi oblast with 19.3 percent, equal to Viktor Yanukovych, the eventual winner. Offered the post of prime minister by the new president, he declined to head a government that would include members of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He also disapproved of the formation of a governing coalition by coopting individual parliamentarians instead of as previously on the basis of recognized fractions (caucuses).
For the 2012 elections to the Supreme Council of Ukraine Yatseniuk folded his Front for Change into Yuliia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna electoral alliance. In her absence due to imprisonment by Yanukovych, Yatseniuk headed the alliance’s party list which won 25.6 percent of the votes for 62 proportional representation (PR) seats and an additional 39 single-member districts (SMDs) for a total of 101, second behind the Party of Regions with 185. In June 2013, Front for Change merged fully with the Batkivshchyna party under Tymoshenko’s leadership. Yatseniuk became head of its political council and Front for Change was dissolved.
When President Viktor Yanukovych suspended the signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013, Yatseniuk called for his impeachment and the government’s dismissal. During the ensuing Euromaidan Revolution, Yatseniuk was one of three political leaders—the others were Vitalii Klitschko and Oleh Tiahnybok—to actually appear on Independence Square and speak to the protestors. In January 2014 he was again offered the post of prime minister but again declined. After President Yanukovych’s flight from office, Yatseniuk was appointed prime minister, at which time he announced that approximately $70 billion had been misappropriated from the state treasury to offshore accounts in the preceding three years under the Yanukovych administration. The coalition supporting his government collapsed in July 2014, but his resignation was not accepted by the Supreme Council of Ukraine, necessitating him to continue in his post as prime minister.
Yatseniuk’s new political party, People’s Front, created in September 2014 and led by him, contested the parliamentary elections the following month. It led in the popular vote with 22.1 percent, for 64 seats on the party list side of the ballot, narrowly beating out the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (21.8 percent for 63 seats). Petro Poroshenko’s electoral alliance fared better in the SMD races, so that the final tally of seats placed it first with 127 and Yatseniuk’s People’s Front second with 82. Again Arsenii Yatseniuk became prime minister.
In July 2015, Prime Minister Yatseniuk visited Canada where he met Prime Minister Stephen Harper and concluded a free trade agreement between the two countries. Canada’s trade at the time with Ukraine was modest—between $200 and $300 million annually—but the agreement was regarded as a significant political gesture.
Arsenii Yatseniuk’s prime ministership was not smooth. He came under attack by President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian media, and Poroshenko’s appointee as governor of Odesa oblast, Mikheil Saakashvili, formerly president of Georgia. His initiatives in the Supreme Council of Ukraine were torpedoed by Poroshenko’s loyalists. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that its bailout of Ukraine would be forfeited if there were no proper reforms and a real struggle against political corruption. The Supreme Council voted in February 2016 to declare the work of his government ‘unsatisfactory.’ Yatseniuk survived a vote of non-confidence. In April 2016 he announced his resignation and was replaced by Volodymyr Groisman, speaker of the Supreme Council and a close ally of Poroshenko. Both Yatseniuk and Groisman had been within the president’s small informal circle of strategic advisors, but Poroshenko clearly favored loyalty over competence.
In retrospect, Yatseniuk viewed his tenure as having been successful. He had pushed through reforms such as simplifying the tax code, implementing austerity measures required by the IMF, and restructuring Ukraine’s foreign debt so as to avoid default.
Having stepped down as prime minister, Yatseniuk remained politically active appearing frequently in the media, domestic and foreign, to denounce the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine and to defend the principles of freedom, international law, sovereignty, and independence. In January 2022 he warned against the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine which took place a month later. Speaking at the Kyiv Security Forum of which he is head he characterized Vladimir Putin as the direct political heir of Joseph Stalin. In his view, an end to the war and lasting peace required that Ukraine be armed for victory, that deterrence of Russia be assured by NATO, and that Ukraine become a member of the European Union to restore its economy.
Bohdan Harasymiw
[This aericle was written in 2025.]