Vladimir Constantinov is the chairman of the State Council of the unrecognized Crimean Republic and a member of the United Russia faction in the lower chamber of the Russian parliament.

He was born in the village of Vladimirovca, Slobozia District of the Transnistrian region in eastern Moldova. He finished his secondary education in Nauchnenskaya village of Bakhchysarai District of the Crimea, and followed an internship as an assisting stone cutter at Alma, a construction material company.

Mr. Constantinov is also a graduate from the Tools Building Factory – today the State Technical University in Sevastopol, which is the largest higher education institution in the Crimean Peninsula, earning a diploma in industrial and civilian engineering.

Between 1979 and 1981, he served in the Soviet armed forces. The next 17 years he assumed managing roles in business: eight years as the general manager of Consol-Story, the largest construction companies in the Crimea, and nine years as the chairman of the board of Ukrrosbud, a state-held construction company.

He got involved in politics in 1998 and is currently holding his fifth mandate in the Crimean regional parliament. In 2010 he was voted the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Crimean Autonomous Republic and two years later he firmly condemned the idea of incorporating the peninsula into Russia.

In 2014, with Russian forces spreading all over the peninsula, the Supreme Council chief changed his discourse in favor of the Russian annexation of the Crimea. While visiting Moscow later on, he said “the transfer of the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954 was a mistake.”

The Ukrainian authorities filed criminal charges against Vladimir Constantinov, along with another 26 Crimean officials, for helping Russia’s special services occupy Ukrainian territory and masterminding crime and fraud in the real estate market. The prosecutors also want to try him for crimes against the state and territorial integrity of the country.

A Kiev tribunal issued an arrest warrant on the name of Constantinov on 5 March 2014, based on evidence from Ukraine’s National Security Service (SBU) that he was acting against the constitutional order and for seizing the power illegally.

As the head of the Crimean Supreme Council, Mr. Constantinov urged voters during the pseudo-referendum on 16 March 2014 – which has never been recognized internationally – to cast their ballots in favor of “Crimean independence.” The next day after that event, he was elected the chairman of the State Council of the so-called Crimean Republic, and on 18 March he signed the Treaty of Crimea’s Adherence to Russia.

In 2018, Vladimir Constantinov said Ukraine was waging “an undeclared terror war” against the Crimea.