The bloc, combined with the 81 members of the People’s Front led by ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk gives the two coalition partners only 227 members — one more than a simple majority.
Who are they?
Oleksandr Bryhynets
Joined on March 29
Bryhynets, 54, was one of two lawmakers, who replaced Yegor Firsov and Mykola Tomenko, two ex-members of the Poroshenko Bloc who were expelled from the Verkhovna Rada in controversial circumstances on March 28.
Bryhynets, Ukrainian poet and songwriter, entered Ukrainian parliament for the first time after the parliamentary election in October 2012 as a candidate at a single-mandate constituency in Kyiv with Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna faction.
During the October 2014 election, Bryhynets was too low on the list of Poroshenko Bloc to get seated.
After Firsov and Tomenko were expelled from Verkhovna Rada, the Poroshenko Bloc used the much criticized “party dictatorship” law that expulsion of candidates from their party tickets. The block decided to kick out Andriy Bohdan, a defense lawyer for Gennadiy Korban and close ally of billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.
With Bohdan out of the way, Bryhynets and Dmytro Bilotserkovets got into parliament.
Dmytro Bilotserkovets
Joined on March 29
Bilotserkovets, 30, joined Verkhovna Rada for the first time as a lawmaker. He was an assistant to lawmakers Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, then the member of Viktor Yushchenko’s Nasha Ukraina party, and Ihor Pober from the Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR party. In the summer of2014, Klitschko named him as an adviser to the Kyiv mayor.
Oleh Barna
Joined on March 29
Barna, 48, was expelled from the faction after he tried to carry Yatsenyuk from the parliament’s rostrum as the prime minister was delivering his annual report on Dec. 11, 2015. He is a head of an anti-corruption subcommittee. Barna is a first-term lawmaker and was a schoolteacher for 20 years. He also headed the council in Nahiryanka village in Ternopil Oblast from 2002-2010.
Iryna Suslova
Joined on March 30
Suslova, 27, entered the Verkhovna Rada after the parliamentary elections in October 2014 as a candidate with the Samopomich Party. She was kicked out of Samopomich faction after she supported Viktor Shokin in a vote that made him Ukraine’s prosecutor general in February 2015.
Critics voiced concerns over her joining Poroshenko Bloc, citing the Constitutional Court ruling from 2008 that said that a lawmaker elected on a party list has to stay in the faction of this party. Suslova wrote on her Facebook page that she “did not see any other way except unite around the commander in chief of the state in a critical time of history.”
Pavlo Kyshkar
Joined on March 31
Kyshkar, 36, also joined the Poroshenko Bloc after being expelled from Samopomich. He was forced to leave the faction after he voted for the changes to the Constitution on decentralization, a vote that Samopomich did not support. Kyshkar came to Verkhovna Rada from the war front in Ukraine’s Donbas, where he coordinated the information campaign of the volunteer Donbas Battalion.
Kyshkar told the Kyiv Post that he understands that after entering the Poroshenko Bloc his political career is over, but he made the switch to avoid early parliamentary elections.
Viktor Kryvenko
Joined on March 31
Kryvenko, 34, was kicked out of Samopomich for the same reason as Kyshkar. Kryvenko has a long history of working at advisory jobs in state companies, including National Space Agencyand Ukroboronprom, an association of Ukrainian defense enterprises.
Yuriy Bublyk
Joined on April 12
Bublyk, 42, entered parliament as a lawmaker twice – in 2012 and 2014, and both times through winning at the single-mandate constituency in Poltava Oblast as Svoboda’s candidate. He left Svoboda Party in December 2015.
After joining the Poroshenko Bloc, Bublyk addressed voters, saying that he did not share Poroshenko Bloc’s opinion on many issues, including privatization and selling the agricultural lands. However, he said he was promised the freedom to vote as he chooses. In Bublyk’s words, the only reason for him to join the faction was to avoid snap elections.
Serhiy Rudyk
Joined on April 12
Rudyk, 45, won his seat in parliament as an independent single-mandate constituency in Cherkasy Oblast.
He was a member of Svoboda Oarty, but left in March 2015. Before entering Verkhovna Rada he served as the head of the State Agency of Land Resources of Ukraine. After Bublyk and Rudyk joined Poroshenko Bloc, Svoboda’s press service asked media outlets to stop associating them with the party, and condemned their move into the president’s faction.
Andriy Nemyrovskiy
Joined on April 12
Nemyrovskiy, 32, entered parliament in May 2015, when the Samopomich faction accepted the resignation of its lawmaker Andriy Miroshnyk. Nemyrovskiy was the next one on the party ticket. As well as Kyshkar and Kryvenko, he was kicked out from Samopomich in August 2015, after he voted for the changes to the Constitution on decentralization. Nemyrovskiy joined Volya Narodu (People’s Will) grouping before leaving for the president’s bloc.
Serhiy Mishchenko
Joined on April 12
Mishchenko, 44, has been working on the different levels of the prosecutorial system for 10 years. He served as an advisor on law for then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in 2005.
He was a lawmaker twice as a candidate on the party ticket of Tymoshenko’s Bloc. Mishchenko also won his way into the parliament twice by himself, as an independent candidate on a single-mandate constituency in Kyiv Oblast.
Investigative media outlet Nashi Groshi reported that Mishchenko might be connected to the parking business near the Boryspil airport, allegations that Mishchenko denied. He was also reported to have been close to former Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka and his son, ex-lawmaker with Party of Regions Artem Pshonka. Mishchenko denied this information as well.
He told the Kyiv Post on April 12 that he would leave Poroshenko Bloc and the coalition in three months if “Ukraine does not feel changes.”
Fedir Negoy
Joined on April 14
Negoy, 58, was elected twice as an independent candidate at the single-mandate constituency in Kherson Oblast during the parliamentary elections in 2012 and 2014. Negoy joined the Poroshenko Bloc less than an hour before the vote that accepted the resignation of Yatsenyuk and approval of Volodymyr Groysman as his replacement. He became the 227th member of the new coalition.
The night before the coveted vote, Arkadiy Kornatskiy, a lawmaker with the Poroshenko Bloc, declared that he was leaving the faction, putting the coalition at risk of falling apart. By the end of the day, he changed his mind.
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