Stepan Khmara
Stepan Khmara (1937–2024) was a Ukrainian doctor, dissident and politician. Born on October 12, 1937, in Bobiatyn (then part of Poland), he studied medicine in Lviv and helped publish banned Soviet literature as part of the underground samizdat movement. In 1980 the KGB arrested him and he spent seven years in strict-regime camps and five years in exile for “Ukrainian nationalist activities.”
After returning to Ukraine in 1987, he became a leader of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1988. When the group evolved into the Ukrainian Republican Party in 1990, Khmara joined the movement for Ukraine’s independence. He took part in the Revolution on Granite in October 1990 and joined a 13-day hunger strike during the protests.
Khmara served as a People's Deputy (member of the Verkhovna Rada) from 1990 to 1998 and again from 2002 to 2006, representing several parties including the People’s Movement of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party, and Batkivshchyna. He ran unsuccessfully in 2006 with the Ukrainian National Bloc of Kostenko and Plyushch. He supported Viktor Yushchenko during the 2004 Orange Revolution.
Khmara died on February 21, 2024, in Kyiv, at the age of 86. A public funeral was held on February 25 at Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, and he was buried at Baikove Cemetery.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 11:31 (CET).