Oleksandr Zadorozhnii

Zadorozhnii was born on 26 June 1960 in the village of Krasnyi Kut, which was then part of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union.^[4] His father, Viktor, was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts & Architecture, and his mother Klavdiia was retired at the time of his birth.^[4] After graduuating in 1982 from the University of Kyiv with a specialty in international law, he received his Candidate of Legal Sciences in 1988.^[4] Simultaneously, while as a postgraduate student, he was deputy dean of the faculty there.^[4] He worked at the University of Kyiv up until 2008, eventually becoming a professor and vice-rector.^[4]

In 1990, he became the founder and director of the law firm "Prosken", which he ran until 1998.^[4]

During the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada for electoral district no. 217 as a member of the People's Democratic Party, before eventually leaving in 2001 and joining the Unity of Oleksandr Omelchenko party.^[4] As an MP, he was Chair of the Committee on Legal Policy.^[4] He was re-elected during the 2002 Ukrainian parliamentary election, but the time for district no. 213 as part of the Yednist bloc.^[4] During this time, he served as a Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada, and was also a member of the Higher Council of Justice.^[4] He was dismissed by Yushchenko for a "violation of oath", after he had criticized Yushchenko's dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada and repeated veto of the Cabinet Law.^[2] In 2008 he became a staff adviser to Yulia Tymoshenko which was described as a shock due to his long-standing ties to Kuchma.^[4]

He died in May 2017.^[5]

• Order of Merit, First Class (2020 – posthumous)^[6]