List of Famous people born in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Ivanitsky was a Russian wrestler and Olympic champion in Freestyle wrestling who competed for the Soviet Union.

Olena Anatoliivna Bondarenko is a Ukrainian journalist, a former People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 1st Deputy Chairman of the Committee of Verkhovna Rada on freedom of speech and information; Head of Subcommittee of Television and Radio Broadcasting Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on freedom of speech and information. Member of the Party of Regions grouping between May 2006 and 2014. In 2012 she was re-elected into parliament on the party list of Party of Regions. Bondarenko did not participate in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election. And in the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election she lost in Mykolayiv Oblast’s District 131, with 8% of the votes.

Alexander Sergeevich Khodakovsky is the commander of the pro-Russian Vostok Battalion formed in early May 2014 during the 2014 insurgency in Donbas. Khodakovsky is a former commander of the Alpha special unit of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). During the 2014 insurgency in Donbas, he left Ukrainian state service and became the leader of the pro-Russian "Patriotic Forces of Donbas" in Donetsk Oblast, and later the Security Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic. In May 2018 Khodakovsky relocated to Russia and in September 2018 he claimed that Russian border guards did not let him return to Donetsk.

Yevhen Viktorovych Levchenko also known as Evgeniy Levchenko is a retired Ukrainian footballer. The main participant of the Russian version of the show The Bachelor-Kholostyak on Russian Televisional Channel TNT.

Natan Sharansky is an Israeli politician, human rights activist, and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chair of the Executive of the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018. Natan Sharansky currently serves as the Chairman of the Institute of the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) (www.isgap.org).

Oleksandra Volodymyrivna Kuzhel is a Ukrainian politician who served in various roles from 1994 to 2019. She was a People's Deputy of Ukraine as part of the Fatherland party from 2012 until 2019. A graduate of the National Metallurgical Academy of Ukraine, she studied at the Zaporizhia State Engineering Academy and received a PhD in Economics in 1983.

Mark Pavlovych Padun is a Ukrainian cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Bahrain Victorious.

Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko is a Soviet and Russian mathematician, professor at Moscow State University, well known as a topologist, and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of a pseudoscientific theory known as New Chronology, based on works of Russian-Soviet writer and freemason Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov. He is also a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (1991).

Dmitry Vadimovich Sablin is a Russian politician who has served as a member of the State Duma since 2003, for the United Russia party. He previously served as a member of the Federation Council. He is the first deputy chairman of the Fighting Fraternity veterans organizations.

Vyacheslav Oliynyk is a former Ukrainian wrestler and Olympic champion. He won a gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He was born in Mariupol, Ukrainian SSR.