PERSON: Petro Poroshenko

Roshen Confectionery Corporation

Founder

Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko (born 26 September 1965) is a Ukrainian oligarch and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.

Poroshenko served as the minister of foreign affairs from 2009 to 2010, and as the minister of trade and economic development in 2012. From 2007 until 2012, he headed the Council of Ukraine’s National Bank. He was elected president in 2014.

During his presidency, Poroshenko led the country through the first phase of the war in Donbas, pushing the Russian separatist forces into the Donbas Region. He began the process of integration with the European Union by signing the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. Poroshenko’s domestic policy promoted the Ukrainian language, nationalism, inclusive capitalism, decommunization, and administrative decentralization. In 2018, Poroshenko helped create the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, separating Ukrainian churches from the Moscow Patriarchate. His presidency was distilled into a three-word slogan, employed by both supporters and opponents: armiia, mova, vira (English: military, language, faith). As a candidate for a second term in 2019, Poroshenko was defeated by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Poroshenko is a people’s deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the European Solidarity party. Outside government, Poroshenko has been a prominent Ukrainian oligarch with a lucrative career in acquiring and building assets. His most recognized brands are Roshen, a large-scale confectionery company which has earned him the nickname of “Chocolate King,” and his TV news channel 5 kanal, which he was forced to sell to comply with anti-oligarch legislation in November 2021. He is considered an oligarch due to the scale of his business holdings in manufacturing, agriculture and finance, his political influence from several stints in government prior to his presidency, and his ownership of an influential mass-media outlet.

>> Wikipedia