Being a regional politician during the 1990s, Parubiy distanced himself from far-right political organizations in 2004 and actively participated in the Orange Revolution. In 2007, he was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament on the Our Ukraine political ticket. During Euromaidan, he was in charge of the Maidan self-defense, commanding more than ten thousand people by February 2014.
After the victory of the revolution, he was appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, a position from which he oversaw the initial stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In August 2014, Parubiy stepped down from the position[9] and later he was voted into the Parliament on the ticket of the People's Front. He was elected first as deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and later, in 2016, as its chairman. During his tenure, he supported Ukrainian integration into the NATO and the EU. Parubiy was described by the BBC as a politician of the national-democratic camp.[10]
He was assassinated in Lviv on 30 August 2025 by a gunman who fled on an electric bike.[8]
Early life and education
Andriy Parubiy was born in Chervonohrad, Lviv region, on 31 January 1971. His ancestors served in the Austro-Hungarian military and, after its collapse, in the Ukrainian Galician Army that fought in the Polish-Ukrainian War from 1918 to 1919. His uncles fought for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and after World War II, the whole family was sent to Siberia for ten years. His father was active in the Ukrainian independence movement and made a political career after 1991, reaching the position of deputy mayor of Lviv. On his mother's side, his family is from the Kharkiv region[11]
In 1994, Parubiy graduated from the history department of University of Lviv and received a diploma with the specialization as historian.[11] In 2001, he completed a program in political science and sociology at the graduate school of the State University Lviv Polytechnic.[12]
Career
Start of political involvement, 1987–2004
Andriy Parubiy started his career in 1987 as laboratory technician in the archaeological expedition of the Institute of Social Sciences [uk][13] In 1988, he co-founded the organization "Heritage", which looked after the graves of Ukrainian Insurgent Army soldiers and defended anti-Soviet protesters.[10] Parubiy was arrested by the authorities of the Ukrainian SSR for organizing an unsanctioned rally in 1989.[14] In 1990, he participated in an election for the local council. The day before the vote, he was arrested and learned of his successful election to the Lviv regional council while under arrest.[10]
From December 2013 to February 2014, Parubiy was a commandant of Euromaidan.[28] He coordinated the volunteer security corps for the mainstream protesters.[29] In December, these self-defense groups consisted of 5,000 people,[30] rising to 12,000 in February.[10] During the protests, Andriy Parubiy was injured twice, in early December[31] and in late January.[32] On 18 February, he called on protesters to block the parliament building.[33] He was then appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.[34] This appointment was approved by then-new Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko on 16 June 2014.[35]
After the revolution, 2014–2025
Parubiy at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 14 April 2016
Parubiy resigned as Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council on 7 August 2014. He declined to say why, stating "I believe it is unacceptable to comment on my resignation in a time of war", and he would "continue to assist the front, primarily volunteer battalions".[9] President Poroshenko signed a decree confirming Parubiy's dismissal the same day.[38] Later, Parubiy acknowledged that the dismissal happened due to different views over the resolution of the war in Donbas; Parubiy opposed the negotiation of the Minsk Protocol and believed the conflict should be resolved by force.[10]
MP Parubiy with Ukrainian counterintelligence officer Roman Chervinsky after Chervinsky's release on bail, 18 July 2024
In September 2014, Parubiy became a founding member of his new party People's Front.[39] At the Ukrainian elections of October 2014 he was re-elected as People's Deputy on the People's Front party list. On 4 December, he was elected as Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada.[40] After this, he left the party's faction in the parliament.[41] In the same month, he was a target of an assassination attempt; a grenade was thrown at him near the hotel "Kyiv".[10]
After the resignation of Volodymyr Groysman, on 14 April 2016, he was elected as Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada.[1] On 15 February 2019, Parubiy signed a decree on the establishment of the parliamentary reform Office. The VR Chairman noted that it is planned to involve 15 employees in the work in the Office in accordance with the directions of parliamentary work.[42]
After Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President of Ukraine, he called for early parliamentary elections. Andriy Parubiy called such an action unconstitutional[43] and later accused Zelenskyy of a lack of knowledge of Ukrainian legislation.[44] In the July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Parubiy was placed second on the party list of European Solidarity.[45] The party won 23 seats (on the nationwide party list and 2 constituency seats) and thus Parubiy was re-elected to parliament.[46] After Russia invaded Ukraine, he joined the territorial defense forces, and a few months later left to concentrate on his work in the Parliament.[27]
Parubiy (left, behind the red car) moments before being assassinated
Andriy Parubiy was shot and killed in Lviv, Ukraine, on 30 August 2025.[47] The attack occurred at around 10:35 am EEST[48] on Yefremov Street.[49] A suspect had been arrested in Khmelnytskyi Oblast by 1 September.[50]
Andriy Parubiy brought a smoke bomb into Parliament to protest the signing of the Kharkiv Accords, which continued the lease of bases for the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea from 2017 to 2042.[10] He subsequently introduced a bill to denounce the accords.[52]
After meeting with NATO representatives in Tbilisi, Parubiy introduced an amendment to legislation setting Ukraine's foreign policy goal as NATO membership, not just the achievement of the criteria for it.[53] He said that the law on national security of Ukraine took into account the position of NATO experts.[54] Later, he supported President Petro Poroshenko's proposition to introduce the aim of joining NATO into the Constitution.[55]
Parubiy was against holding direct talks with representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic separatists, calling them terrorists.[56] He said that he had not supported the Minsk agreements from the start, claiming that Putin could be stopped only by military force and sanctions.[57] Later, he supported a bill on the reintegration of the Donbas, which was criticized by the EU and the UN for a lack of attention to the human rights of people from the occupied territories and by Russia for a lack of mention of the Minsk agreements in the text.[58] Before the Normandy summit, he participated in protests that urged Zelensky not to compromise on Ukraine being a unitary state, its EU and NATO membership, and holding elections in the Donbas before Ukraine had full control of the border.[59] In 2022, after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he advocated against negotiation on Russian terms, asserting that this was an opportunity for Ukraine to destroy that "empire".[10]
Parubiy expressed support for the reform of Ukrainian prosecutors by former Georgian politician David Sakvarelidze.[60] He called it "shameful" when the parliament did not absolve political activists from the requirement to declare their assets.[61] He supported the introduction of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Court, saying that it was Ukraine's obligation to the IMF.[62] In 2019, Parubiy defended the medical reform by Ulana Suprun.[63]
Parubiy supported a law to allow Ukrainian law enforcement to block websites without a court decision for 48 hours.[64] After the pro-Russian Ukrainian channel NewsOne planned to conduct a teleconference with a Russian TV channel, Parubiy urged the introduction of a law to make this impossible in the future.[65]
Parubiy expressed support for the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on national security grounds and subsequently visited Istanbul as part of a Ukrainian delegation to obtain a tomos on autocephaly for the church.[70][71]
Andriy Parubiy stated that both protesters and law enforcement during the Revolution of Dignity were shot by Russian snipers.[75] Commenting on the attack in Kerch, he said that children died because of the "madness" of the "Russian world".[76]
^On 17 March 2014, Parubiy left the parliament to take the position of the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. He was re-elected on 27 November of the same year.
^ abAndreas Umland; Anton Shekhovtsov (September–October 2013). "Ultraright Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994–2009". Russian Politics and Law. 51 (5): 41. doi:10.2753/RUP1061-1940510502. S2CID144502924. Retrieved 2015-02-20. It is noteworthy that of these various Ukrainian nationalist parties the SNPU was the least inclined to conceal its neofascist affiliations. Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf's Hook (wolfsangel), used as a symbol by the German SS division Das Reich and the Dutch SS division Landstorm Nederland during World War II and by a number of European neofascist organizations after 1945. As seen by the SNPU leadership, the Wolf's Hook became the "idea of the nation." Moreover, the official name of the party's ideology, "social nationalism," clearly referred back to "national socialism" – the official name of the ideology of the National-Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and of the Hitlerite regime. The SNPU's political platform distinguished itself by its openly revolutionary ultranationalism, its demands for the violent takeover of power in the country, and its willingness to blame Russia for all of Ukraine's ills. Moreover, the SNPU was the first relatively large party to recruit Nazi skinheads and football hooligans. But in the political arena, its support in the 1990s remained insignificant.
^Hryshko, Liliia (17 December 2013). "Євромайдан: Знижка на газ за що?" [Euromaidan: Discount on gas for what?]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Savytskyi, Oleksandr (2 December 2013). "Позаду тривожна ніч" [A troubled night is behind us]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Nedilko, Natalia (20 January 2014). "Поранено Парубія" [Parubiy was injured]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Hubar, Olena (22 May 2019). "Указ Зеленського щодо розпуску Ради оскаржать в КC" [Zelenskyy's decree on the dissolution of the Rada will be challenged in the Constitutional Court]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Sydorzhevskyi, Maksym (10 June 2016). "Глава СБУ розповів, які переговори можливі з "ДНР/ЛНР"" [The head of the SBU told what kind of negotiations are possible with the "DPR/LPR"]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Klymchuk, Oleh; Melnyk, Anastasia (13 July 2016). "Влада й народ України по-різному оцінюють мінські угоди" [The authorities and people of Ukraine have different assessments of the Minsk agreements]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Hryshko, Liliia (15 July 2015). "Затримання VIP-корупціонерів оголило конфлікт всередині ГПУ" [The detention of VIP-level corrupt officials has exposed a conflict within the Prosecutor General's Office]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Rzheutska, Liliia (26 February 2018). "Чому антикорупційний суд цього року не запрацює" [Why the Anti-Corruption Court will not start working this year]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Dubenskyi, Vitalii (17 September 2016). "Парубій: Влада виступає за автокефалію УПЦ" [Parubiy: The authorities advocate for the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Hubar, Olena (6 January 2019). "Вселенський патріарх вручив томос предстоятелю ПЦУ" [The Ecumenical Patriarch handed the tomos to the primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Honcharenko, Roman (18 October 2018). "Як Україна реагує на трагедію в Керчі" [How Ukraine is reacting to the tragedy in Kerch]. Deutsche Welle (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
^Kryvdyk, Ostap (30 August 2025). "Друг Вовк. Пам'яті Андрія Парубія" [Friend Wolf. In memory of Andriy Parubiy]. Ukrainska Pravda (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2025-08-31.
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