Political career

In October 1991 Tyahnybok became a member of the Social-National Party of Ukraine.^[9] He is characterised^{[by whom?]} as representative of Ukraine's far right. From 1994 until 1998, Tyahnybok served as a member of the Lviv Regional Council.^[10] In 1998, Tyahnybok was first elected to the Ukrainian Parliament as a member of Social-National Party of Ukraine;^[9] in the parliament he became a member of the People's Movement of Ukraine faction.^[9] In 2002, Tyahnybok was reelected to the Ukrainian parliament as a member of Victor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc.^[9] In parliament he submitted 36 motions for debate, but the parliament adopted only four of them.^[11] In the majority of his motions, he opposed the introduction of the Russian language as the second official state language; proposed recognition of the fighting role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II; called for the lustration (regulation of political involvement) of former communist officials, security-service officers and undercover agents; and demanded the prohibition of communist ideology.^[11] The Rada did not adopt any of these proposals.^[11]

On 20 July 2004 Tyahnybok was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction^[9][12] after he made a speech in the Carpathian Mountains at the gravesite of a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.^[12] In the speech, which was aired on television in the summer of 2004, he made comments such as:^[13] "[You are the ones] that the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine fears most^[12]" and "They were not afraid and we should not be afraid. They took their automatic guns on their necks and went into the woods, and fought against the Muscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.^[11]: 226"

In his defence Tyahnybok said he had not offended Russians in calling them an occupying force, as this was based on historical fact. He also denied that he was anti-Semitic, saying he was rather pro-Ukrainian.^[14][15] The prosecutor's office initially filed criminal charges for inciting ethnic hatred, but later withdrew them for lack of evidence. Since that time Tyahnybok has won nine court cases in that regard. Court decisions have recognized that the criminal case was raised unlawfully, and that the actions of TV-channel "Inter" (which showed the footage of Tyanybok's speech) as well as of the Head of the Derzhkomnatsmihratsia H. Moskal were recognized as ones that insult the honor and dignity of Oleh Tyahnybok and caused him moral damage. The actions around that issue led to creation of the "Program in defense of Ukrainians". Tyahnybok stated in 2012 "this speech is relevant even today" and "All I said then, I can also repeat now".^[6]

Since February 2004 Tyahnybok has headed the All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" political party.^[10]

In 2004 he was excluded from Our Ukraine party parliamentary group for stating that the country was governed by a “Jewish-Russian mafia”. A year later he wrote an open letter to the presidency, asking to “put an end to the criminal activities of Ukrainian Jewry”.^[16]

In April 2005, Tyahnybok co-signed an open letter to President Yushchenko calling for a parliamentary investigation into the "criminal activities of organized Jewry in Ukraine."^[6][17]

Tyahnybok stood as a candidate for the post of Mayor of Kyiv during the 2008 Kyiv local election in 2008.^[11] In the elections Leonid Chernovetskyi was reelected with 37.7% of the vote, while Tyahnybok received 1.37% of the vote.^[11][18]

Tyahnybok stood as a candidate for President of Ukraine in the 2010 presidential election representing the All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" party. He received 352,282 votes, or 1.43% of the total.^[19] He received most of his votes in the Halychyna oblasts--Lviv oblast, Ternopil Oblast and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast—and his vote share in this region amounted to five percent of the total ballots cast.^[20] In the second round, Tyahnybok did not endorse a candidate. He did present a list of some 20 demands that second-round candidate Yulia Tymoshenko would have had to fulfil first before gaining his endorsement - which included publicizing alleged secret deals Tymoshenko had with Vladimir Putin and ridding herself of what he called Ukraine-haters in her close circles.^[21]

During the 2010 Ukrainian local elections Tyahnybok's party won between twenty and thirty percent of the votes in Eastern Galicia where it became one of the main forces in local government.^[7][22]

During the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election Tyahnybok was re-elected (he was top candidate on his party list) to the Ukrainian parliament when his party won 38 seats.^[23][24][25] Tyahnybok was elected leader of the party's parliamentary faction.^[26]

In June 2013, Tyahnybok and another Svoboda Party leader were barred from entering the U.S. for their open anti-Semitism, according to the Kyiv-based newspaper Segodnya.^[27] In December 2013 US Senator John McCain visited Kyiv where he met with and shared a platform with Tyahnybok.^[28][29]

In March 2014 Russia launched a criminal case against Tyahnybok, and some members of Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence for "organizing an armed gang" that had allegedly fought against the Russian 76th Guards Air Assault Division in the First Chechen War.^[30]

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election he received 1.16% of the vote.^[31] In the October 2014 parliamentary election Tyahnybok was again first on the election list of his party; since the party came 0,29% short to overcome the 5% threshold to win seats on the nationwide list he was not re-elected into parliament.^[32][33]

In 2014 he met then Vice President Joe Biden on a visit to the White House.^[34]

On 14 October 2018, Tyahnybok announced he would not take part in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election but that his party had instead decided to nominate Ruslan Koshulynskyi as the candidate of nationalist political forces.^[35] In the election Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the votes.^[36]

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Tyahnybok was placed first on the joined list of Svoboda with National Corps, the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh and Right Sector.^[37] But in the election they won 2.15% of the votes, less than half of the 5% election threshold, and thus no parliamentary seats via the national party list.^[38]