From YT description: Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko (Ukrainian: Віктор Андрійович Ющенко) (born February 23, 1954) is the current President of Ukraine.
As an informal leader of the Ukrainian opposition coalition, he was one of two main candidates in the October--November 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. The eventful election was won by Yushchenko through a revote of the runoff between him and Viktor Yanukovych, the government supported candidate. The revote, called for by the decision of the Ukrainian Supreme Court due to wide-spread election fraud in favor of the governmental candidate in the original run-off, was won by Yushchenko (52% to 44%). The public protests prompted by election fraud played a major role in that presidential election; and the term Orange Revolution, of which Yushchenko is considered a leader, is interchangeably applied to the protests or the election itself.
Viktor Yushchenko graduated from the Ternopil Finance and Economics Institute, beginning his profession as an accountant. After completing his studies (1975), he worked as a deputy of the chief accountant in a kolkhoz, then served as a conscript in the Border Guard unit of KGB on the Soviet--Turkish border (1975-1976).
Yushchenko worked in the banking system from 1976. From 1983 he was the Deputy Director for Agricultural Crediting at the Ukrainian Republican Office of the USSR State Bank. Then (1990-1993) he worked as vice-chairman and first vice-chairman of the JSC Agroindustrial Bank Ukraina. In 1993, he was invited by Vadym Hetman to work in the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine (Ukraine's central bank). After Hetman's resignation in 1993, Yushchenko was appointed the head of the supervisory board of the Bank. Later, in 1997, he was reappointed as the head of the Bank by the parliament.
As a central banker, Yushchenko played an important part in the creation of Ukraine's national currency, the hryvnia, and the establishment of a modern regulating system for commercial banking. He also successfully overcame a debilitating wave of hyper-inflation that hit the country and managed to defend the value of the currency following the 1998 Russian financial crisis.
In 1998, he wrote a thesis on "The Development of supply and demand of money in Ukraine" and defended it in the Ukrainian Academy of Banking, getting Candidate of Economic Sciences (Doctor of Economics) degree.
In December 1999, Yushchenko was unexpectedly nominated to be the prime minister by President Leonid Kuchma after the previous candidate, Valeriy Pustovoytenko, fell short by one vote of ratification by the parliament.
In 2001, Yushchenko refused to support and lead the mass protests against Kuchma's regime which erupted following the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Moreover, he co-signed a highly critical public address with Kuchma calling the protesters "fascists" -- despite the fact that many of them were supporters of his cabinet.
Significant economic progress was made during Yushchenko's cabinet service, though critics argue that this was made possible by the general situation of the economy, and was not the result of his actions. Soon, his government (particularly, deputy prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko) became embroiled in a confrontation with influential coal mining and natural gas industry leaders. The conflict resulted in a 2001 no-confidence vote by the parliament, which was mainly the work of the Communists, who had opposed Yushchenko's economic policies, and centrist groups associated with the country's powerful "oligarchs". The vote was carried by 263 to 69 and resulted in Yushchenko's removal from office.
The fall of his government was viewed with dismay by many Ukrainians; four million votes were gathered in support of a petition supporting him and opposing the parliamentary vote and a 10,000-strong demonstration was held in Kiev.
Yushchenko's campaign was built on face-to-face communication with the voters, since the government prevented most major TV channels from providing equal coverage to the candidates. Meanwhile, his rival, Yanukovych, frequently appeared in the news, even accusing Yushchenko, whose father was a Red Army soldier imprisoned at Auschwitz, of being "a Nazi".
Supporters of Yushchenko were organized in the "Syla Narodu" ("Power to the People") electoral coalition, which was led by himself and his political ally Yulia Tymoshenko, with the Our Ukraine coalition being the main constituent force.
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