Oleh Paraskiv

2006-2012: Mayor of Myrnyi

Paraskiv first entered politics in 1998 when he was elected a deputy to the village council of Myrnyi. He was elected twice and also became secretary of the council. In early 2006, his friend Anatoly Symonenko ran for the post of Mayor of Myrnyi, with Paraskiv being a confidant to him. However, a few days before the elections in March 2006, Symonenko was "brutally beaten", and was taken to the intensive care unit of the Yevpatoria City Hospital, but died a few days later. Symonenko's death was found in investigations to have been ordered by his rivals in the elections, namely Alla Bondarenko, with eight people being convicted in his murder. Paraskiv said he was then persuaded to run in the repeat elections in May, where he was pitted against three other opponents, all local entrepreneurs. He was elected with 85% of the vote.

After becoming mayor, Paraskiv described the village as "abandoned," with roofs leaking and hardly any water supply or heat, and said that many wanted it to be transferred and annexed into nearby Yevpatoria. During his time in office, he helped develop the "Terminal Myrnyi", which dealt with water transport, and was headed by Yuriy Zherebtsov, a future counselor to the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada. In the fall of 2011, a new Orthodox church was erected in the village, which he funded with his wife, as his wife owns enterprises. Towards the end of his term, in August 2012, it was proposed that the National Academy of Sciences would organise an Institute for the Development of Crimea in Myrnyi, with further plans to attract long-term investment in western Crimea. This was personally confirmed by Sergey Glazyev, the then advisor to the President of Russia. He said this would help with tourism from Russia and help with the mass exodus of people from Myrnyi.

2012-2014: Verkhovna Rada

In 2012, Paraskiv announced his candidacy for the upcoming 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary elections with the Party of Regions in constituency No. 4. At the time of its formation in 2012, the constituency consisted of the cities of Yevpatoria and Saky, alongside parts of the Saky municipality. According to some sources, Paraskiv was specifically nominated by the Party of Regions, although he was unknown at the time for two reasons. The first was that the Party of Regions had nobody who would run in the district, as their preferred candidate, Oleksandr Zats, wanted to run on the party list due to fears, and they did not want longtime Yevpatoria mayor Andriy Danylenko [uk] to run either. Second, he was supported by former employees of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), who had dachas near Myryni, who said they would do what was needed to elect him. In the end, he was elected with 34% (27,990 people) of the vote due to a relatively low turnout of 49.3%. His closest opponent was the self-nominated candidate Mykola Kotlyarevsky, who got 27.6% of the vote (22,856 people). Upon joining the Rada, Paraskiv joined the Party of Regions faction and was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Committee on State Building and Local Self-Government.

Russian annexation of Crimea

Shortly after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, Paraskiv initially said he would not give up his mandate in the Verkhovna Rada, and called the referendum on the annexation something people wanted and that Russia had the right to such actions in Crimea. In an interview, he also said that he believed the roots of the problem started in 2006 when he said Viktor Yushchenko began "rhetoric" about opposition to Russia. In June, he left the Party of Regions faction, and then in the following month joined the pro-Russian "For Peace and Stability" faction. In September, prior to the end of his mandate, he said he was renouncing his mandate in parliament due to the first elections in Crimea and his being a Russian citizen.