Mykola Derkach

Mykola Ivanovych Derkach (Ukrainian: Мико́ла Іва́нович Дерка́ч; born 25 July 1949) is a Russian-born Ukrainian politician who served as the Minister of Economy of Ukraine from 2004 to 2005 under President Leonid Kuchma. He also later served as a People's Deputy of Ukraine from 2007 to 2012 as part of the Lytvyn Bloc and the People's Party.

Derkach was born on the Doroshenko farmstead, located in the Russian SFSR at the time. After briefly working in Maykop, he attended the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute (now in Dnipro, Ukraine), where he graduated from the Faculty of Economics. He then took on a variety of senior economic positions with the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, and eventually in 1996 became the head of the regional state administration. In 2001, he became the Ambassador of Ukraine to Lithuania, and then in 2004 after the resignation of Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi, he was chosen as the Minister of Economy. He served in this role for a brief time, as Kuchma's term ended soon after, and in February 2005 newly-appointed Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko replaced him in her new cabinet. Thereafter, he ran for the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election on the party list for the Lytvyn Bloc, which he won a seat in. He served until 2012, and did not run for reelection thereafter and has since retired from politics.