Olha Kuryshko was appointed the Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy in January 2025. Prior to that, from July 1, 2023, Ms. Kuryshko operated as the Deputy Permanent Representative, and from December 5, 2024, as the Acting Permanent Representative.

Olha Kuryshko is a lawyer, graduate of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law Academy of Ukraine. She worked in private, public and non-governmental sectors, providing legal assistance to internally displaced persons, drafting legal documents and managing advocacy initiatives. In 2015-2016, she worked at the Coalition of NGOs “Resource Center for Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons” and later at the project “House of Free People”. From 2016 to 2021, she was an advocacy expert and Deputy Chairman of the Board of the NGO “CrimeaSOS”.

Ms. Kuryshko joined the team of the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in December 2021 and headed the Legal Support Department of the Mission. She took an active part in the development of legal acts related to the temporarily occupied peninsula and its residents, namely the law on the abolition of the so-called “free economic zone ‘Crimea’” and on the peculiarities of economic activity in the occupied territories of Ukraine, the draft law on the status of the Crimean Tatar people, the draft law on the establishment of a simplified procedure for state registration of civil status acts that took place in the temporarily occupied territories and outside Ukraine, the resolution on simplifying the procedure for crossing the administrative border between the Kherson and Donetsk regions, a draft law on establishing the procedure for state registration of civil status acts that took place in the temporarily occupied territories and outside Ukraine.

Prior to joining the Mission, Olha Kuryshko participated in the development of the Strategy for De-occupation and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol, and is currently a member of the working group at the Mission, which develops the state’s priority steps after the de-occupation of the peninsula.

Ms. Kuryshko also joined the Ukrainian legal team as an expert at the public hearings on the pleadings in the case of Ukraine v. Russia regarding the violation of two conventions by the Russian Federation – on the financing of terrorism and on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.