Career
He was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of Transnistria from 2000 until his election as president in 2011. Furthermore, he was speaker of Pridnestrovian Supreme Soviet from 2005 to 2009, and the leader of the opposition party Renewal until 2010. Shevchuk is an ethnic Ukrainian and a citizen of both Transnistria and Russia.
Born in Rybnitsa, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union (now Rîbniţa, Transnistria, Moldova), Yevgeny Shevchuk is a lawyer who has worked in government and private business.
His biography profile describes him as "social democratic technocrat with a European outlook, and a man of profound democratic beliefs". As part of the minority opposition in parliament prior to December 2005, he spearheaded a reform drive by his party to introduce changes to Transnistria"s electoral code.
Among the changes were a requirement that purely technical qualifications be used as the basis for selecting polling station chairmen and a rule prohibiting state-owned media outlets (radio, television, newspapers, etc) from publishing results of polls and forecasts related to elections, so as to not influence free voter choice. This was reported in the United States State Department"s Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2005.
After that the European Parliament banned Shevchuk from entry to the European Union countries.
On 22 July 2009, Shevchuk resigned from his post as speaker of parliament. Mikhail Burla, leader of Renewal and Chairman of the Committee for economic policy, budget and finance, was elected as the new vice-speaker. Shevchuk cited a controversial attempt to revise the county"s constitution by president Igor Smirnov as the main reason for his resignation.
In December 2011, Shevchuk was elected president of Transnistria.
He was inaugurated on 30 December 2011.