Biography
The father had survived Auschwitz and wore the prisoner number from the concentration camp on his arm. Yushchenko grew up with his parents in poor, rural conditions. He completed school with a high school diploma. Yushchenko then studied at the Financial Technical Institute in Ternopil from 1975. Here he worked, among other things, in the departments for Marxism and Leninism. After his studies he was called up for military service. Yushchenko began his professional life as an accountant in a collective farm in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. In 1976-1985 he worked at a branch of the State Bank in Ulyanivka in his native Sumschina Oblast.
Here he initially worked in the economics department, which he headed from 1977. From 1985 to 1987, Yushchenko was deputy department head of the State Bank in Kiev, responsible for agricultural issues such as collective farm loans and financing. At the end of 1987 he moved to the Ukrainian republic headquarters of the Soviet Union's "Agroprombank". In 1990 he became deputy department head of the Agricultural Bank Ukraina in Kiev, which was organized as a commercial joint-stock company. In 1993, Yushchenko was appointed chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine. As Ukraine broke away from the USSR, he successfully introduced the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia.
In 1998, Yushchenko published his dissertation on "Development of money supply and demand in Ukraine." As his economic influence increased in the following years, his political acceptance also increased. On December 22, 1999, Yushchenko was elected Prime Minister of Ukraine. In this position he initiated a market economy reform. The economist established himself as the father of the stable currency. Internally, he asserted himself as a fighter against corruption. This made Yushchenko a serious threat to the oligarchs in eastern Ukraine. Yushchenko lost the office of head of government on May 29, 2001 due to a vote of no confidence.
Observers saw the power intrigues being spun against him as an intention to prevent the popular and Western-oriented politician from running for president and possibly winning the election. Yushchenko's successor as prime minister was Anatoly Kinach from the "Party of Industrial Entrepreneurs of Ukraine" (PIUU). In 2002, Yushchenko returned to the political stage by becoming a member of parliament and parliamentary group leader of the opposition party "Our Ukraine". In June 2002 he became a member of the Committee on Civil Affairs, National Minority Issues and International Relations. In 2004, Yushchenko ran in the presidential election campaign of Ukraine.
However, during his candidacy, the popular opposition politician was the victim of a poison attack. The first symptoms appeared on September 6, 2004, during a meal with the head of Ukrainian state security, Igor Smeshko. The cause of the illness was not clear for a long time, as no such dramatic clinical pictures were known in civilian medicine. Shortly afterwards, dioxin poisoning was diagnosed in the Rudolfinerhaus hospital in Vienna, where Yushchenko was being treated. 1000 times the normal concentration of TCDD dioxin was found in his blood and tissue. The poisoning caused such damage to the skin tissue on his face that it disfigured him beyond recognition.
In the presidential elections on November 21, 2004, Yushchenko's competitor Viktor Yanukovych initially emerged as the winner. However, the events of the runoff election resulted in the so-called "Orange Revolution", a peaceful protest that lasted several weeks against the election fraud, as a result of which the runoff election was repeated on December 26, 2004 following a decision by the Supreme Court. In the third round of voting on December 26, 2004, Viktor Yushchenko emerged as the clear winner with almost 52% of the votes. Right at the beginning of his term in office, the new President of Ukraine was confronted with a challenge to the election by his opponent: Yanukovych filed a lawsuit against the election results with the Supreme Court.
In March 2005, Yushchenko came to Berlin on a state visit. In June 2005 he visited Paris. In September 2005, the Ukrainian President fired his Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was considered a figurehead of the democracy movement, but whose government had fallen into disrepute due to allegations of corruption. He appointed Yuri Yechanurov as the new head of government. Viktor Yushchenko was first married to Svetlana Kolenik. His second marriage is to the American-born daughter of a Ukrainian emigrant family: Yekaterina Yushchenko-Tchumatschenko. He is the father of three daughters and two sons from both marriages.
