Viktor Yushchenko

Who is Viktor Yushchenko?

Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a Ukrainian politician who was President of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010.

As an informal leader of the Ukrainian opposition coalition, he was one of the two main candidates in the October–November 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. Yushchenko won the presidency through a repeat runoff election between him and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The Ukrainian Supreme Court called for the runoff election to be repeated because of widespread electoral fraud in favor of Viktor Yanukovych in the original vote. Yushchenko won in the revote. Public protests prompted by the electoral fraud played a major role in that presidential election and led to Ukraine's Orange Revolution.

Following an assassination attempt in late 2004 during his election campaign, Yushchenko was confirmed to have ingested hazardous amounts of TCDD, the most potent dioxin and a contaminant in Agent Orange. He suffered disfigurement as a result of the poisoning, but has been slowly recovering.

Before his election as President, Yushchenko already had a career in Ukrainian politics. In 1993, he became Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine. From 1998 to 2001 he was Prime Minister. After his dismissal as Prime Minister, Yushchenko went into opposition to President Leonid Kuchma and he founded the Our Ukraine bloc, which at the 2002 parliamentary election became Ukraine's most popular political force, with 23.57% of the votes. After Yushchenko's election in 2004 to the Presidency, this alliance was unable to continue this success, garnering only 13.95% of the votes in 2006 and 14.15% of the votes in the 2007 parliamentary election.