Vasyl Onopenko
Vasyl Onopenko is a Ukrainian judge, and politician.
Onopenko is from Vinnytsia Oblast. He graduated the Kharkiv Law Institute in 1975 and later a candidate dissertation in 1994. In 1976-1981 Onopenko was a judge of the Lityn Raion court, later in the Chernihiv Oblast court. In 1985-1991 he was a judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine.
In 1992 he was appointed a Minister of Justice of Ukraine. At the post in 1994 Onopenko created own political party, the Party of Human Rights. Sometime in 1995 his party was united with Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and Ukrainian Party of Justice into Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. He was elected the chairman of the newly created political party. Due to inadequate investigation of events of July 1995, in August 1995 Onopenko resigned.
Soon after being elected to Verkhovna Rada at the 1998 parliamentary elections, Onopenko was excluded from SDPU and created yet another party the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party joining the "Independents" group in parliament and then "Batkivshchyna". In 1999 presidential elections he ran for the President of Ukraine post.
During the 2002 parliamentary elections Onopenko returned to parliament on the party list from Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc being #4 on the list. Soon after being elected, for a short time he was unaffiliated, but then rejoined the parliamentary faction.
For the 2006 parliamentary elections he again ran on the party list from BYuT listed #4. Later Onopenko resigned as a parliamentary after being elected to chairman of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. At the end of 2006 his son-in-law replaced him as a leader of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party.
Onopenko quit the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party after Nataliya Korolevska changed it to Ukraine – Forward! in 2012.
In 2012 parliamentary elections Onopenko ran as unaffiliated and unsuccessful.
