Head of Stefanchuk's Secretariat becomes a People's Deputy from "Servant of the People"
Olena Slobodyan, head of the secretariat of Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, took the oath of a People's Deputy of Ukraine on September 15 and acquired deputy powers. She entered parliament on the list of the "Servant of the People" party, where she was No. 166 in the 2019 elections.
Slobodyan took the oath during a session of the Verkhovna Rada.
The Central Election Commission recognized her as elected People's Deputy back on September 4. This happened after the early termination of powers of "Servant of the People" deputies Andriy Zhupanyn and Ostap Shypaylo, who submitted personal statements of resignation.
The next candidates in the party's election list were Olena Slobodyan at No. 166 and Andriy Misyats at No. 167. The CEC recognized both as elected.
On September 9, the commission separately registered Slobodyan as a People's Deputy. At the same time, the CEC emphasized that she would acquire deputy powers only after taking the oath in the Verkhovna Rada. This happened on September 15.
Who is Olena Slobodyan
Slobodyan was born in 1987. In the snap parliamentary elections of 2019, she ran from "Servant of the People" as a non-partisan, but her place on the list was not enough to enter the Verkhovna Rada.
At the time of the elections, Slobodyan worked as head of a department in the state organization "National Intellectual Property Office".
According to the "Chesno" movement, after Ruslan Stefanchuk became head of the Verkhovna Rada in 2021, Slobodyan became head of the secretariat of the parliament speaker. In this position, she provided organizational and analytical work for the speaker.
Slobodyan graduated from Khmelnytskyi University of Management and Law, and later completed postgraduate studies there. She defended a candidate's dissertation on patent-legal protection of inventions in the field of biotechnology. Her scientific supervisor was Ruslan Stefanchuk.
Allegations of plagiarism
In 2026, a scandal arose around Slobodyan's dissertation. She was accused of extensive textual borrowings without proper citations.
According to the "Chesno" movement, citing the results of an anti-plagiarism check, coincidences were found on 147 of 185 pages of the main text of the dissertation – approximately 79% of the pages of the work.
The authors of the check claimed that some texts were borrowed from other Ukrainian scientific works, as well as from a Russian dissertation. This refers specifically to the accusations of the authors of the anti-plagiarism analysis, not to a court-established fact of violation.
According to "Chesno", among the works with which coincidences were found were dissertations defended even before the appearance of Slobodyan's first scientific publications on the topic of her research.
After taking the oath on September 15, Slobodyan officially acquired the powers of a People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the IX convocation.
Based on materials from: Verkhovna Rada, CEC, "Chesno" Movement
