The first president of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, died at the age of 89. This was announced by the Commissioner for Children’s Rights Mykola Kuleba, MP Iryna Herashchenko, as well as a number of Ukrainian media.

A few months ago it became known that Leonid Kravchuk underwent heart surgery and was in intensive care for a long time.

He later underwent rehabilitation in Germany.

Leonid Kravchuk was born in the village of Velykyi Zhytyn in the Rivne region.

From the 1950s he was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, worked in the agitation and propaganda department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR.

In 1990-1991 he was the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and played an important role in Ukraine’s independence.

In December 1991, as a non-partisan candidate, he won the first presidential election in independent Ukraine, and a few days later signed the Bialowieza Agreement on the End of the Soviet Union with Russian and Belarusian leaders Boris Yeltsin and Stanislav Shushkevich.

He called this event the most important event of his life.

In 1994, Kravchuk lost the presidential election to Leonid Kuchma, but remained in politics, becoming a member of parliament several times, including in the SDPU (o) party.

He often spoke from a pro-Russian position, and in 2006 he was the leader of the “Not so!” Bloc, which advocated Ukraine’s rapprochement with Russia.

In July 2020, Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Leonid Kravchuk head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Tripartite Contact Group on Donbass, after which his rhetoric changed somewhat.

“Every Ukrainian must defend his land, and Ukraine’s enemies must be expelled from Ukraine so that their spirit does not smell here,” Leonid Kravchuk said on Ukraine 24 during one of his last appearances on television in April.

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