He defended his thesis entitled "Social development of village: Experience, Problems, Prospects (for example Prydniprovia USSR)" in 1991 at the Academy of Social Sciences (Moscow), and in 1997 ibid - doctoral thesis "The formation and development of the agricultural economy in the form of a market transformation."

Before becoming a politician Kyrylenko worked as head of a collective farm (kolkhoz) and as a civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

[2][6] When Yulia Tymoshenko set up the breakaway All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" faction Kyrylenko joined her.

[2] Kyrylenko left Parliament 2001[7] to become Minister of Agriculture (in the Kinakh Government) and one of the founding members of (the now defunct electoral bloc) For United Ukraine in 2001.

[4][5] Kyrylenko was placed at number 15 on the electoral list of Batkivshchyna during the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election; he was re-elected into parliament.