ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
January 23, 2005 Sunday 1:39 AM Eastern Time
Yushchenko-third and youngest Ukrainian president
KIEV
New Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko enters his presidential
office on Sunday. He is the third head of state in independent
Ukraine: Leonid Kravchuk was the first. Then, Leonid Kuchma was
elected two times, but Yushchenko is the youngest of them: a month
later, he will turn 51 on February 23. He had been born in the
village of Khoruzhevka, Sumy Region in 1954.
In 1976, Yushchenko graduated from the Ternopol financial and
economics institute. Then, he served in border troops of the Soviet
Army on the Soviet-Turkish border, not far from the then city of
Leninakan, Armenia.
Since 1976, he worked in the banking system at first as an economist
and then head of a branch of the State Bank of the USSR in the Sumy
Region. Between 1985 and 1999, he was moving up the ladder of the
banking career up to the head of the Ukrainian republican branch of
the State Bank of the USSR.
In 1984, he graduated from the post-graduate courses of the Ukrainian
research institute of economics and agriculture, receiving the degree
of Candidate of Economic Sciences. Since 1992, worked as first deputy
board chairman of the Ukraina commercial agro-industrial bank.
Chairman of the Ukrainian National Bank between January 1993 and
December 1999.
The republic carried out successfully a monetary reform under his
guidance. He established a state treasury and started setting up a
mint. In 1997, Yushchenko ranked among the six best bankers of the
world.
He was Ukrainian prime minister from December 1999 and to April 2001.
In January 2002, Yushchenko formed and headed the election bloc Our
Ukraine, incorporating ten center-right parties. The bloc received
the highest support among other parties and blocs at the
parliamentary election in March 2002 – 24.7 percent electors voted
for it. Yushchenko headed the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction,
numbering 101.
On December 26,2004, Yushchenko carried the elections, winning 51.99
percent of the electorate in the rerun of the second round of
elections.
He married the second time. Has five children: two sons and three
daughters as well as two grandsons.
