Colonel Serhiy Kryvonos, the first deputy commander of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, has been appointed by President Petro Poroshenko as deputy secretary at the National Security and Defense Council on March 12.
The surprise pick took place less than a week after Kryvonos stood down as a presidential candidate for upcoming March 31 elections in favor of Poroshenko on March 6.
In his new office, the senior military officer has replaced Oleh Hladkovskiy, Poroshenko’s long-time friend and business partner who was discharged from the Council on March 4, following a high-profile scandal: journalists of the Bihus.Info, an investigating journalism project, published a report that suggested Hladkovskiy and his son were part of a long-running corrupt scheme in defense production sector. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
Still suffering from the scandal’s fallout, Poroshenko on March 12 claimed that Kryvonos’ appointed was the example of the president’s “zero tolerance to corruption.”
“(That was made) in order to resolutely protect the army and defense industry from any assaults, or distrust,” the Presidential Administration press service quoted Poroshenko as saying. “We must enhance the trust of society and international partners to defense industry.”
Poroshenko also marked the colonel’s prestige among the Armed Forces ranks and his stainless reputation as a career combat-hardened officer.
“From your own experience you know the situation at the front line and a soldier’s life,” Poroshenko said. “What are the requirements to military hardware and to our advanced designs.”
In his turn, Kryvonos claimed that thanks to the support from Poroshenko, the government, and international partners, to “put a maximal effort to render the acts of corruption and plundering in the army impossible.”
“Those mean rats that tried, or are trying, to plunder the army, will surely be punished,” the officer said.
Apart from taking the post in the Defense and Security Council, Kryvonos will also get to head of the government’s commission for defense industry and military-technical cooperation.
Born in 1970 in the city of Kremenchuk in Poltava Oblast, Kryvonos started his career in 1988 as a drafted Soviet Army soldier, but continued with getting a military education grade at Kyiv Combined Arms Command School.
He subsequently got ahead the 8th Special Operations Regiment based in the city of Khmelnitskiy and commanded a defensive operation during the battle of the Kramatorsk Airport in the early days of Russia’s war in the Donbas in spring 2014.
He continued as a leader of the Special Operations Department at the General Staff of the Armed Forces.
Following the creation of Ukraine’s Special Operation Forces as a separate branch of service in 2016, Kryvonos was appointed as the force’s first deputy commander.
In early 2019, he came forward as a presidential candidate, but withdrew on March 6 after a brief campaign in which he particularly advocated free firearms possession and broad paramilitary training for civilians.
