Oleh Oleksandrovych Kiper was born on May 1, 1980, in the city of Tymkove, Odesa Oblast; he is an Honored Lawyer of Ukraine and holds a Ph.D. in Law.
In 2002, he graduated from the Odessa National Law Academy with a degree in Law.
He began working in the prosecutor’s office in 2001, gradually holding the positions of investigator at the Kotovsk Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office of the Odesa region, prosecutor in the Odesa regional prosecutor’s office, prosecutor in a department of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Office, deputy prosecutor of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, and deputy head of the office—head of a department at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
On October 24, 2014, Kiper was subject to lustration because, during Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, he served as deputy head of the Main Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, a position to which he was appointed by then-Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka.
This meant he was barred from working in government agencies until 2024.
On September 11, 2019, the Kyiv District Administrative Court reinstated him to the position of senior prosecutor of the Main Supervision Department, ruling that the lustration was unfounded and that his involvement in Yanukovych’s usurpation of power had not been established.
From June 9, 2020, he served as Deputy Prosecutor of Kyiv, and from July 27, 2020, as Prosecutor of Kyiv.
On May 30, 2023, by decree of the President of Ukraine, he was appointed head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration.
Prior to his appointment, he served as a freelance advisor to Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President.
In 2022, Kiper became embroiled in a scandal over a 10-day vacation abroad during martial law and a ban on men leaving the country. Kiper himself explained that he had submitted the necessary documents and received permission to do so. He later admitted that this was his second vacation since the start of the full-scale war; prior to that, he had traveled to Austria for medical treatment.
In May 2024, journalists from hromadske.ua published an investigation in which they described Kiper as the person who established almost sole control over grain exports from Ukraine following the full-scale war. In particular, as head of the Regional State Administration, Kipper introduced customs rules for the Odesa region and its ports that differed from the national regulations; 85% of the country’s total agricultural exports passed through these ports.
His wife, Iryna Kiper, held Russian citizenship until 2023.
News about Oleh Kiper
