Sergey Aksyonov

Sergey Valeryevich Aksyonov (Russian: Сергей Валерьевич Аксёнов; Ukrainian: Сергій Валерійович Аксьонов, romanized: Serhiy Valeriiovych Aksionov; Romanian: Serghei Valerievici Aksionov; born 26 November 1972) is a Russian politician serving as the head of the Republic of Crimea since 9 October 2014, a territory internationally recognised as part of Ukraine. Sergey Aksyonov was born in Bălți in the Moldavian SSR on 26 November 1972. His father Valery Aksyonov was a Red Army officer and the founder and leader of a group called the Russian Community of Northern Moldova in Bălți. After founding the group at the end of the 1980s, the tensions between Russians and Moldavians soon broke into a war. The Russian army supported Transnistrian paramilitary troops. Transnistria became de facto independent from Moldova in 1992.

In 1989, Sergey Aksyonov moved to Crimea and enrolled in a college for military engineers in Simferopol; however, the fall of the Soviet Union occurred before he could graduate from the academy to become a Soviet Army officer like his father and grandfather. He then refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Ukraine, which he considered "an unjustly severed appendage of Russia".

From 1993 to 1998, he was deputy director of a company named Ellada, a business related to food products. From October 1998 to March 2001, he was deputy director of the Asteriks company and since April 2001 he has been deputy director of the Eskada company. Aksyonov is also the head of Crimea's Greco-Roman wrestling organization, Sports club Hwarang-do. Aksyonov received his Ukrainian passport on 12 August 1997.