Background and career
Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko (born 26 September 1965) is a Ukrainian politician, oligarch, and former bureaucrat who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. He 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 in a landslide, avoiding the second round of voting by winning 55.46% in the first round. During his presidency, Poroshenko led the country through the first phase of the war in Donbas, recovering most of the Donbas Region from the Russian separatist forces. In September 2014 and February 2015, Poroshenko would sign the Minsk Agreements effectively freezing the frontlines and greatly reducing casualties in the ongoing war. He also began the process of re-building the Ukrainian military which was largely dismantled during Yanukovych's presidency, a re-militarization which would continue under Zelenskyy's presidency. A staunch proponent of Ukraine's EU ascension, Poroshenko began the process of integration with the European Union by signing the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement in June 2014. He also signed a visa-free travel agreement with the European Union in June 2017, and re-oriented national trade towards the EU. In terms of domestic policy, Poroshenko 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 (Ukraine's unicameral parliament) and leader of the European Solidarity party. Outside government, Poroshenko has been a prominent Ukrainian oligarch with a 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. In opinion polling conducted since he left office, Poroshenko is considered an above average Ukrainian President.
Petro Poroshenko was born on 26 September 1965, into an ethnic Ukrainian family in Bolhrad, a primarily Bulgarian town in Ukraine's southwestern Odesa Oblast. Poroshenko's father, Oleksiy Poroshenko (1936–2020), was born in the village of Safiany near Izmail, which at the time belonged to Romania, and worked as an engineer and later a government official who managed multiple factories in the Ukrainian SSR. According to Poroshenko, his father's family stemmed from the Danube Cossacks. Little is known about his mother, Yevhenia Serhiyivna Hryhorchuk (1937–2004), but a Ukrainian newspaper said she was an accountant, who taught at a vocational and technical school of accounting. Poroshenko spent his childhood and youth in Tighina (Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, now known as Bender and under de facto control of the unrecognized breakaway state Transnistria), where his father Oleksii was heading a machine building plant and where he learned Romanian. In his youth, Poroshenko practiced judo and sambo, and was a Candidate for Master of Sport of the USSR. Despite good grades, he was not awarded the normal gold medal at graduation, and on his report card he was given a "C" for his behavior. After getting into a fight with four Soviet Army cadets at the military commissariat, he was sent to army service in the distant Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1989, Poroshenko graduated, having begun studying in 1982, with a degree in economics from the international relations and law department (subsequently the Institute of International Relations) at the Kyiv University. At this university he was friends with Mikheil Saakashvili, whom he would appoint as Governor of the Odesa Oblast (region) in May 2015, and who is a former president of Georgia. In 1984, Poroshenko married a medical student, Maryna Perevedentseva (born 1962). Their first son, Oleksiy, was born in 1985 (his three other children were born in 2000 and 2001). From 1989 to 1992, Poroshenko was an assistant at the university's international economic relations department. While still a student, he founded a legal advisory firm mediating the negotiation of contracts in foreign trade, and then he undertook the negotiations himself, starting to supply cocoa beans to the Soviet chocolate industry in 1991. At the same time, he was deputy director of the 'Republic' Union of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs, and the CEO of "Exchange House Ukraine". Poroshenko's brother, Mykhailo, older by eight years, died in a 1997 car crash under mysterious circumstances.
In 1993, Poroshenko, together with his father Oleksii and colleagues from the Road Traffic Institute in Kyiv, created the UkrPromInvest Ukrainian Industry and Investment Company, which specialized in the confectionery and automotive industries (as well as in other agricultural processing later on). Poroshenko was director-general of the company from its founding until 1998, when in connection with his entry into parliament he handed the title over to his father, while retaining the title of honorary president. Between 1996 and 1998, UkrPromInvest acquired control over several state-owned confectionery enterprises, which were combined into the Roshen group in 1996, creating the largest confectionery manufacturing operation in Ukraine. His business success in this industry earned him the nickname "Chocolate King". Poroshenko's business empire also includes several car and bus factories, Kuznia na Rybalskomu shipyard, the 5 Kanal television channel, as well as other businesses in Ukraine. Although not the most prominent in the list of his business holdings, the assets that drew much recent media attention, and often controversy, are the confectionery factory in Lipetsk, Russia, that became controversial due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Sevastopol Marine Plant (Sevmorzavod) that has been confiscated after the 2014 Russian forcible annexation of Crimea and the media outlet 5 kanal, particularly because of Poroshenko's repeated refusal to sell an influential media asset following his accession to presidency. According to Poroshenko (and Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust) since becoming President of Ukraine he has relinquished the management of his businesses, ultimately (in January 2016) to a blind trust.
In March 2012, Forbes placed him on the Forbes list of billionaires at 1,153rd place, with US$1 billion. As of May 2015, Poroshenko's net worth was about US$720 million (Bloomberg estimate), losing 25 percent of his wealth because of Russia's ban of Roshen products and the state of the Ukrainian economy. According to the annual ranking of the richest people in Ukraine, published in October 2015 by the Ukrainian journal Novoye Vremya and conducted jointly with Dragon Capital, a leading investment company in Ukraine, president Poroshenko was found to be the only one from the top ten list whose asset value grew since the previous year's ranking. The estimate of his assets was set at US$979 million, a 20% growth, and his ranking increased from 9th to 6th wealthiest person in Ukraine. The article observed that Poroshenko remained one of the only two European leaders who owned a business empire of such scale, with Silvio Berlusconi of Italy being the other. A total of €450 million is kept in an Amsterdam-based company registered in Cyprus, as a result of which his effective tax rate is 5% rather than the statutory tax rate of 18% in Ukraine. The company is probably to be worth much more, as the annual accounts published by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce only contain the book value of the shares, which is very likely to be lower than the market value. After his election, Poroshenko lost the billionaire status as his net worth dropped by 40% to reach $705 million. Following the 2014 elections, Poroshenko sold his stake in Roshen. The Kyiv Post reported that Makar Paseniuk, managing director of Investment Capital Ukraine, was hired by Poroshenko to act as his personal advisor and oversee the sale of the company.
A number of businesses were once part of the Ukrprominvest which Poroshenko headed in 1993–1998. The investment group was dissolved in April 2012. Poroshenko has stated that upon beginning his political activity he passed on his holdings to a trust fund.
Bogdan group (Poroshenko sold his share in 2009 due to the collapse of its production after the 2008 financial crisis), centered in Cherkasy Roshen group 5 Kanal and Priamyi television channels (he denies property relations with Priamyi) Kuznia na Rybalskomu shipyard in Kyiv International Invest Bank, owned through a trust and along with Ihor Kononenko Ukrprominvest-Agro, an agrarian holding Zoria Podillia, an agrarian company near Haisyn, specializing in sugar production from sugar beets Podillia MAS-Agro Ahrofirma "Dniproahrolan" Ahrofirma "Ivankivtsi" Sevastopol Shipyard (lost in 2015 due to a corporate raid by the Russian occupational authorities in Crimea)
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
