Viktor Yanukovych: Ukraine’s ousted president who may be Russia’s pick after war

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Viktor Yanukovych’s rise to power

Born into the family of a metalworker and a nurse in Yenakiyevo in July 1950, he was jailed twice for violent crimes in his youth. However, according to his official biography, the charges were eventually quashed.

Starting off his career as a transport executive in the Soviet Union’s key coal-mining industry in eastern Ukraine, he became a Doctor of Economics in 2000. He then went on to become the governor of the Donetsk region, home to more than three million people and the economic powerhouse of Ukraine, less than a year after entering the local administration. The then President, Leonid Kuchma, appointed him prime minister in November 2002.

In 2004, he took the plunge, going on to win the presidential elections. However, following massive protests in Kiev that came to be known as the Orange Revolution, the election was declared fraudulent. He served a second term as prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and became Ukraine’s most popular politician.

He went on to sweep the 2010 presidential elections, defeating his rival Yulia Tymoshenko. During his presidency, Yanukovych steered Ukraine towards a closer relationship with the EU.

However, days before it was due to be signed, he rejected an association agreement in November 2013. Street protests, the biggest since the 2004 Orange Revolution, erupted and continued for months, reaching a bloody climax between February 18 and 22. It was the deaths of at least 88 people, many of them protesters shot dead by uniformed snipers in 48 hours of bloodshed, that ultimately brought him down.

Under EU’s pressure, he signed a deal to transfer powers to parliament and hold early elections. But within hours, he had fled the capital and his administration had crumbled.

Yanukovych’s ties with Russia

In 2004, Yanukovych was openly supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though he tried hard to shed the image of being “Moscow’s man”, but, with Ukraine’s finances in a perilous state, he argued that free trade ties with the EU would jeopardise his country’s existing trade with Russia.

Billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, the owner of the Shakhtar Donetsk football club, was a political ally of Yanukovych. The former president’s ties to Moscow became even more apparent after he stepped down and fled the country to Russia to look for asylum.

At his first news conference after leaving Ukraine, given in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, he spoke against any military intervention or future division of his country. He made clear he had fled Kiev in fear of life and would not return without guarantees of safety for himself and his family.

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