From December 1999 till 2004 he worked as a military consultant in various firms.[5]
In February 2000 Hrytsenko served as Freelance Consultant on the Committee on National Security and Defence of the
Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) and in November 2000 as a member of the Public Council of Experts on domestic issues of the
President of Ukraine.[5]
As Minister of Defense, Hrytsenko took up the issues of financing and reforming the
Armed Forces. In 2005, for the first time in recent years, the army was fully funded. In 2006, its budget grew by 51% and reached ₴8.9 billion. Compared to 2004, in 2005 combat training indicators increased by an average of 40-50%.[12]
In 2007, when Hrytsenko was the Minister of Defense, a military hospital in
Dnipropetrovsk was sold to a private company. After that, the former military facility was given to the Russian
VTB Bank, which later received direct control over this hospital.
Petro Poroshenko's commissioner for the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts stated that "Today, in fact, the hospital where our guys are being treated belongs to the invader country." In October 2014, this information was confirmed by
Valeriy Heletey who served as Minister of Defense at the time.[13][14]
Hrytsenko was one of the candidates for presidency in the
2014 Ukrainian presidential election. According to the opinion poll ordered by
1+1 TV channel and conducted by
GfK Ukraine on 6–8 May, 5.6 per cent of the surveyed planned to vote for him.[30] In the election he received 5.48% of the vote, ranking him in 4th place.[31]
In the
2014 parliamentary election Civil Position took part on a joint list with members of the
Democratic Alliance.[32] For elections in single member constituencies, both parties participated separately.[33] In the election the alliance failed to clear the 5%
election threshold (it got 3.1% of the votes) and also both parties did not win a constituency seat and thus no parliamentary seats.[34]
On 4 April 2018,
National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) informed that the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Office initiated a criminal proceeding based on results of state financial audit of "Viysktorhservis" consortium.[35][36] Representatives of public organizations called on the Prosecutor General to check these facts.[37]
Hrytsenko's Civil Position nominated Hrytsenko as a candidate in the
2019 Ukrainian presidential election on 11 January 2019.[38] Hrytsenko's candidacy was supported by the
European Party of Ukraine,
Native Land,
Alternative, and
Wave.[39] On 1 March (2019) fellow candidates
Andriy Sadovyi and
Dmytro Gnap withdrew from the election and urged (their) voters to support Hrytsenko.[40][41] On 7 March
Dmytro Dobrodomov stepped out of the election also in favor of Hrytsenko.[42] During the 2019 presidential election campaign Hrytsenko proposed to create a Ukrainian
military reserve force and to legalize firearms (including registration of all firearms).[43] In the election Hrytsenko did not proceed to the second round of the election; in the first round he placed fifth with 6.91% of the votes.[44]
According to the declaration, in 2016, Hrytsenko earned ₴150,000. He has four apartments in Kyiv (with an area of 56.2 m², 80.2 m², 32.9 m² and 110.3 m²), a car
Volvo XC90, as well as €106,000 in bank accounts.[48][49]
Personal life
From 1978 to 2002, he was married to Lyudmila. The couple had two children.[50][51]
Olexiy (born 1979) graduated from the
Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, he was a forward and then vice president of the
Berkut Hockey Club,[52][51] director of business development at the Enran Telecom research and production company, and first deputy head of the Youth Union of
Our Ukraine party. In 2006, Enran Telecom (in which Olexiy Hrytsenko was working at the moment) became one of the co-executives of the project to create a unified automated system for managing of administrative and business processes in the
Armed Forces of Ukraine. About ₴100 million was allocated for the implementation of the project.[53][54]
The eldest daughter Svetlana (born 1982) graduated from school with a gold medal, received a bachelor's degree in international economics from the
Kyiv National Economic University and a master's degree in international business from
University of Stirling in
Scotland. Svetlana worked as an expert at the Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies (UCEPS) and in the election headquarters of
Viktor Yushchenko, then became the press secretary of the Berkut Hockey Club and the project manager for the Kyiv office of The PBN Company.[51]
Hrytsenko and Mostova have a daughter Anna (born 2004), also Mostova have a son Hlib (born 1999) - the youngest son of Razumkov.[51]
Notes
^In the Ukrainian context, an MP is considered independent if he/she does not belong to any faction represented in the parliament, hence, not necessarily non-partisan. The
Ukrainian term is позафракційний which literally means out of a faction.