Biography

Pavlo Kuftyryev is actively working on building Ukraine as a modern, democratic, environmentally safe country.

For more than 15 years he has been actively engaged in legal, scientific and social activities. He is the founder of several leading public organisations. As a lawyer, his specialisation is environmental and energy law. He has a doctorate from the Institute of Legislation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and is an investor, a mergers and acquisitions expert, president of the Kyiv Chess Federation and vice-president of the Ukrainian Chess Federation.

He is the founder of the Ukrainian Institute of Direct Democracy, an NGO working towards the development of democratic reforms in Ukraine. He is coordinator of the working group of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the development of legislation on democracy, and is a consultant to political parties on issues of direct democracy and the digitalisation of public services.

He serves as chairman of the Committee on Environmental Law of the Ukrainian Advocates Association. Pavlo Kuftyryev is also a managing partner of GRECO, Ukraine’s leading law firm specialising in environmental disputes, class-action lawsuits and consumer protection. He qualified as a lawyer in 2004, and has served as a managing partner and CEO across many different legal and investment projects.

Pavlo Kuftyryev won Advocate of the Year in the field of environmental law in 2020 and 2021.

With the assistance of Pavlo Kuftyryev, the Ukrainian parliament has developed several bills in the field of direct democracy, on collective claims, on environmental insurance and on the latest methods for determining damage in environmental disputes, including the method for determining the amount of compensation for moral damage in collective claims.

Today, Pavlo Kuftyryev is actively engaged in the protection of Ukraine’s citizens who have temporarily fled the country because of the military aggression of the Russian Federation.

Pavlo Kuftyryev has several hobbies: one of them is chess, which he has been playing since the age of four. He is also passionate about contemporary art, and his favourite artist is El Greco.

Pavlo was born on 10 January 1981 in Kyiv.