Valery Nikolayevich Potapenko (Russian: Валерий Николаевич Потапенко; born on 10 June 1958), is a Tajik-born Russian statesman, who had served at the 5th Governor (Head) of Nenets Autonomous Okrug from 2006 to 2009.
From 1992 to 2004, he was an employee of the Office of the Federal Security Service for Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast.
In August 2004, he was appointed as the chief federal inspector for the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
On 16 February 2009, the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, dismissed Potapenko from the post of governor of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug at his own request.
[2] He eventually became the head of the Department for Internal Policy of the Office of the Plenipotentiary Representative in the North-West Federal District.