Viktor Yanukovych

However, it has also been stated by residents of Yanuki that Yanukovych's family left for the Donbas before 1917, and that the collaborator Fyodor Yanukovych was an unrelated individual.

Others, particularly members of the Party of Regions, have claimed that the documents were a falsehood with the intention of disparaging Yanukovych ahead of elections.

By the time he was a teenager, Yanukovych's father had remarried.

However, Viktor left home due to conflicts with his stepmother, 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 has no contact with them.

Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (Віктор Федорович Янукович, ; Виктор Фёдорович Янукович; born 9 July 1950) is a former Ukrainian politician, who was the fourth president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014.

On 15 December 1967, at the age of 17, Yanukovych was sentenced to three years imprisonment for participating in a robbery and assault.

On 8 June 1970 he was convicted for a second time on charges of assault.

He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and did not appeal the verdict.

Before entering national politics, Yanukovych was the Governor of his native Donetsk Oblast from 1997 to 2002.

He was simultaneously the Chairman of the oblast's legislature from 1999 to 2001.

He also served as the prime minister of Ukraine several times between 2002 and 2007 and was a member of the Verkhovna Rada from 2006 to 2010.

Yanukovych first ran for president in the 2004 election, where he advanced to the runoff and was declared the winner against former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko.

However, allegations of electoral fraud and voter intimidation caused widespread protests and Kyiv's Independence Square was occupied in what became known as the Orange Revolution.

The Ukrainian Supreme Court ultimately nullified the runoff election and ordered a rerun, which Yanukovych lost to Yushchenko.

Yanukovych ran for President again in the 2010 election, this time beating Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in an election that was judged free and fair by international observers.

Yanukovych argued in favour of economic modernisation, increased spending and, initially, continuing trade negotiations with the European Union (EU).

He pledged to remain non-aligned in defence policy.

However, his years in power saw what analysts described as democratic backsliding, which included the jailing of Tymoshenko, a decline in press freedom and an increase in cronyism and corruption.

In November 2013, Yanukovych made a sudden decision, amidst economic pressure from Russia, to withdraw from signing an association agreement with the EU and instead accept a Russian trade deal and loan bailout.

This sparked mass protests against him that ultimately led to his ousting as President.

A member of the pro-Russian Party of Regions, his removal from the presidency via revolution in 2014 led to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Since then, he has lived in exile in Russia.

The civil unrest peaked in February 2014, when almost 100 protesters were killed by police.

Yanukovych then signed an agreement with the opposition, but secretly fled the capital later that day.

The next day, 22 February, Ukraine's parliament voted to remove him from his position and schedule early elections on the grounds that he had withdrawn from his constitutional duties, rather than through following the impeachment process outlined in the Ukrainian constitution.

Some of his own party voted for his removal.

On 24 February 2014, the new government issued a warrant for Yanukovych's arrest, accusing him of being responsible for the killing of protestors.

Yanukovych went into exile in Russia, claiming to still be the legitimate head of state.

On 18 June 2015, Yanukovych was officially deprived of the title of president by parliament.

On 24 January 2019, he was sentenced in absentia to a thirteen year prison term for high treason by a Ukrainian court.

In various polling conducted since his departure from office, Yanukovych was ranked the least popular president in Ukraine's independent history.

Yanukovych has also given his name to a collective term for blunders made by Ukrainian politicians: Yanukisms.

Viktor Yanukovych was born in the village of Zhukovka near Yenakiieve in Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.

He endured a very hard childhood about which he has stated: "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 of Russian, Polish and Belarusian descent.

Yanukovych is a surname of Belarusian origin, Yanuk being a derivative of the Catholic name Yan ("John").

His mother was a Russian nurse and his father, Fyodor Yanukovych, was a Polish-Belarusian locomotive-driver, originally from Yanuki in the Dokshytsy Raion of the Vitebsk Region which is in present-day Belarus.

On various occasions, Yanukovych's family has been dogged by accusations that Fyodor Yanukovych was a member of the Schutzmannschaft during World War II, in particular claims by members of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, which included documents from the NKVD supposedly revealing his involvement with the Schutzmannschaft.