Viktor Yanukovych

Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (born July 9, 1950) is a Ukrainian politician who has been the President of Ukraine since February 2010.

Yanukovych served as the Governor of Donetsk Oblast from 1997 to 2002. Subsequently he was Prime Minister of Ukraine from November 21, 2002 to December 31, 2004, under President Leonid Kuchma, and he was an unsuccessful candidate in the controversial 2004 presidential election, ultimately losing to Viktor Yushchenko. Yanukovych continued to lead his party, the Party of Regions, after the 2004 election, and he served as Prime Minister for a second time from August 4, 2006 to December 18, 2007 under President Yushchenko. On March 3, 2010, Yanukovych transferred the leadership of the party to Mykola Azarov.

Yanukovych was the top vote-getter in the first round of the January 2010 presidential election, and faced Yulia Tymoshenko in the second round of the election. Yanukovych won the second round of the election with 48.95% of the vote against Tymoshenko's 45.47%. He is thus the first directly elected president in Ukraine's history to win with less than 50% of the vote.

Early life

Viktor Yanukovych was born in the village of Zhukovka near Yenakiieve in Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. At the time of his birth, the village was part of the Soviet Union. He had a very hard childhood, on which he commented by saying: "My childhood was difficult and hungry. I grew up without my mother who died when I was two. I went around bare-footed on the streets. I had to fight for myself every day."  Yanukovych is not ethnically Ukrainian, but rather of Russian, Polish, and Belarusian descent. His mother was a Russian nurse, who died when Yanukovych was two years old, and his father was a Polish-Belarusian locomotive driver, originally from Yanuki, Vitsebsk Voblast. By the time he was a teenager, Yanukovych had lost both his parents and was brought up by his Polish paternal grandmother, originally from Warsaw. His grandfather and great-grandparents were Lithuanian-Poles. Yanukovych has half-sisters from his father's remarriage, but he has no contact with them.

Criminal convictions

On December 15, 1967, at the age of 17, Yanukovych was sentenced to three years incarceration for participating in a robbery and moderate assault . The sentence was later reduced to 18 months as part of the amnesty announced in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The court did not show Yanukovych clemency, a practice common for young, first-time offenders. At the court trial Yanukovych pleaded guilty and did not appeal his sentence even though he had the chance to do so at the expense of the state.

On June 8, 1970 he was convicted for a second time on charges of assault (Article 102 Criminal Code of Ukrainian SSR) and was sentenced to two years of imprisonment. The verdict was not appealed. It is difficult to determine where Yanukovych served his second incarceration, but residents of Yenakieve claim that it was in the local correctional-labour institution ITL #52. On July 18, 1973, after serving a year of his sentence, the people's court of the city Yenakieve annulled both convictions.

On October 14, 1978 the head of the Donetsk Oblast Court Vitaliy Boyko was approached by the Deputy of the Supreme Soviet from Yenakieve, pilot-cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy to intervene in the rehabilitation of Yanukovych in both convictions in the Donetsk Regional Court. On December 27, 1978 the presidium of the Donetsk Regional Court reportedly quashed the recorded conviction according to the statue 6, part 2 of the Criminal Process Codex of Ukrainian SSR. Yanukovych was quoted as saying that the crimes for which he was tried were "errors of youth".

On July 11, 2005 the office of the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor filed charges of fraud regarding the quashed convictions. In 2006 the General Prosecutor of Ukraine closed the case due to lack of evidence. In 2006 a criminal charge was filed for the falsification of documents regarding the alleged quashing of Yanukovych's prior convictions after it was discovered that two documents had been forged. The signature of the judge in Yanukovych's case had also been forged a charge of battery. The charge failed, because all documentation regarding conviction had been destroyed, because it had expired. However, there were no official records regarding the destruction of these documents.

Career

In 1972, Yanukovych took a job as an electrician in a local bus company and later enrolled and completed a technicum course. In July 1974, he succeeded in enrolling into the Donetsk Polytechnic Institute with his first application. In 1974 under strange circumstances he participated in an auto race in Monaco. In 1976, as a second year student, he was promoted to director of a small trucking division within the Ordzhonikidzeugol coal mining company. In 1980, he graduated (by correspondence) from the institute, with a major in mechanical engineering. Immediately upon graduation, Yanukovych was appointed chief manager of a transportation company in Yenakiieve and admitted to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Committee of the Party Control did not review the criminal past of Yanukovych and was completely satisfied with the declaration of the Donetsk Oblast Court. His appointment as the chief manager marked the start of his managerial career as a regional transport executive, a position at which he has been serving for two decades. Amongst the companies he has worked for have been: Donbasstransremont, Ukrugolpromtrans, and the complex Donetskavtotrans.

Family and personal life

Yanukovych is married to Lyudmyla Oleksandrivna they have two sons, Oleksandr and Viktor. Yanukovych is a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. His son, Viktor, is his party's co-chairman.

Until 2004, Yanukovych was known as batia ("Dad") among his family members, but since that time he became leader. As Yanukovych himself stated, his wife does not wish for her grandson to pick up the bad habits of his grandfather, albeit Yanukovych did not specify what kind of habits those were.

Yanukovych acquired a sizable estate in a former forest preserve near Kiev in 2007, according to critics through a murky series of companies and transactions. Yanukovych did not reveal the price he paid, although he called it a "very serious price".

Yanukovych has multiple talents one of which is singing.

From : www.wikipedia.org