Plachkov was born on 23 November 1957 in the village of
Krynychne, which was then part of the
Ukrainian SSR in the
Soviet Union. He was ethnically a
Bessarabian Bulgarian. After graduating from secondary school, he worked as a handyman for the PMK-99 of the Dunayvodbud trust in
Izmail and as a school laboratory assistant. In 1980, he graduated from the
Odesa National Polytechnic University and qualified as a thermal power engineer. Afterwords, he worked his way up until 1994 at the Kyiv CHPP-5 of the Kyivenergo Production Energy Association. He then took on managerial positions at Kyivenergo until 1999. Then, he was appointed Minister of Energy briefly from February to December 1999. After returning to the private sector, he again became chairman of the board of Kyivenergo until he returned to politics in 2005. In 2005 he became a Candidate of Technical Sciences. He is also the president of Veles LLC, which produces wine in Odesa, and was from 2015 to 2017 Honorary President of the Association of Gas Producers. == Political activity ==