72-year-old Michael Kostiv can become a special representative of the US State Department on Ukraine instead of Kurt Volcker.
72-year-old Michael Kostiv can become a special representative of the US State Department on Ukraine instead of Kurt Volcker. Dzerkalo Tyzhnia reported about it, citing own sources.
Michael Kostiv was born in 1947 in post-war Germany to a Ukrainian immigrants' family.
According to journalist Oleh Stetsyshchyn, Kostiv grew up in the United States, studied at the Minor Basilian Greek Catholic Seminary in Stamford (Connecticut). He graduated from the University of St.Bonaventura, he studied accounting and business law at the University of Maryland, completed the foreign policy and security administration program at Harvard University, and was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971.
After a decade at the CIA, he worked for the Shell company. In 1986, he made an unsuccessful attempt to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida from the Republican party.
He has since worked for Texaco Inc. and was Director of the government relations program in Washington. For several years he was Deputy Chairman of the Board of the International Republican Institute, as well as a member of the Board of the USA-Ukraine Foundation.
Since January 2017, he has been an adviser to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. In addition to Ukrainian, Kostiv is fluent in Russian, Spanish, Italian, Polish.