88-year-old Leonid Kravchuk, President of Ukraine in 1991-1994, passed away on May 10, last year he underwent heart surgery in Germany and has not left the clinic since.
The political career of Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, is best described by a well -known anecdote – about how Kravchuk, Boris Yeltsin and George W. Bush had to run from one building to another under strong that pouring rain. The presidents of Russia and the United States ended up wet skin, and the Ukrainian leader was completely dry. “And I’m careful, between the droplets,” he explained to colleagues.
Kravchuk fought against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism” for many years as the chief ideologist of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, and then became the “father of independence” of Ukraine. He successfully won the first presidential election in the history of Ukraine in the first round, but he could not hold this post even one term, lost the early election and became the first leader in the space after the Soviets to transfer power peacefully.
Kravchuk’s presidency was marked by five -digit inflation and the collapse of the Ukrainian economy, and his symbol was “Kravchuchka” – a kind of wagon, especially popular with shuttle traders in the first half of the 90s. of his term in the presidency, Kravchuk first advocated rapprochement with Russia and supported Viktor Yanukovych. He then became a staunch supporter of NATO and defended Kyiv’s interests in negotiations to resolve the conflict in Donbass.
Independence
In July 1990, Kravchuk became head of the Verkhovna Rada. On August 24, 1991, according to eyewitnesses, Kravchuk until the very end doubted whether it was worth putting the act of liberty on a vote: he allegedly did not have confidence in a positive result of the vote and he suggested that postpone the decisive moment for a couple. of days. At that moment, one of Rukh’s leaders, the poet Dmitry Pavlychko, approached the speaker’s chair and threatened to strangle him if the vote did not take place immediately. Kravchuk listened to the “request”, and the hall unanimously voted “for”. This vote day is celebrated in Ukraine as Independence Day.
A week later, the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada, given the support of the Ukrainian Communist Party of the coup in August, decided to ban it. They said that after that, a delegation of the communist elite came to an audience with Kravchuk and said that only the Supreme Court could decide on the ban on the Communist Party. “So you want to judge too?” – Kravchuk allegedly reacted to the statement of former colleagues in the Central Committee.
At the same time, the Verkhovna Rada, under the leadership of Leonid Kravchuk, scheduled a referendum for December 1, 1991 to confirm the country’s independence, as well as the first presidential election in the country’s history.
So Kravchuk received additional arguments not to participate in negotiations on a new union agreement, which Mikhail Gorbachev tried to revive: they said, nothing should be discussed before the referendum.
And on December 1, 90.3% of Ukrainians voted for the independence of their country. 61.6% of citizens who go to the polling stations supported Leonid Kravchuk, who elected him as the first president of Ukraine.
“I am proud that the last empire in the history of mankind collapsed. I am proud that now there is an independent Ukraine,” Kravchuk said later.
Budapest Memorandum
Formally, on behalf of Ukraine, this agreement was signed by Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma, but a large part of the negotiation process fell to Kravchuk’s presidency. In return, Kyiv allegedly had to receive guarantees of territorial security and integrity from the great powers of the world. Russia’s annexation to Crimea in 2014 nullified that agreement.
Kravchuk himself believes he acted correctly. “Nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine are foreign weapons of Russia -” button “in Russia, production in Russia. We can do nothing with these weapons,” he said in August 2011.
Different alliances
In 1998 and 2002, Kravchuk was elected to the Verkhovna Rada at the head of the party list of Viktor Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian politician and godfather of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who led the pro -Russian party Opposition Platform – For Life , prohibited. since the beginning of the war, and even before the invasion began, he was accused of treason.
On the eve of the Orange Revolution in 2004, Kravchuk supported Viktor Yanukovych, calling himself his VIP agitator, and in September 2005 he said that Viktor Yushchenko’s campaign was allegedly funded by Boris Berezovsky. At the same time, he sided with the “orange”, speaking against the federal structure of Ukraine and for maintaining the status of the Ukrainian language as the only state language.
In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Leonid Kravchuk entered into the last political alliance with Viktor Medvedchuk, who led the pro-Russian bloc Ne Tak !. This project won only 1% of the vote, and Kravchuk retired from active politics after that campaign. However, he continued to be an active commentator on the political life of Ukraine.
After the start of the conflict in the Donbass, Kravchuk took an intense patriotic stance. In the summer of 2020, President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed him head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group to resolve the situation in the Donbas. However, in recent years, the “Minsk Negotiations” still have not come up with the impasse.
quotess
“Freedom came to Ukraine unexpectedly – Kravchuk flew in and carried it on a plate with a blue border.”
“I will talk to anyone, but I will never sign a document that will go with Ukraine. The ultra-patriots who criticize me, that I am talking to someone, have already signed agreements in Minsk, where we cannot get a definite and understandable position until now.
“Yanukovych’s biggest mistake was that he agreed to be president.”
“We don’t have to take Crimea, it will come to us on its own. Because Russia is increasingly showing its inability to govern it.”
“If someone in the Kremlin can come up with a crazy idea to invade Ukraine, I am convinced that Europe is with Ukraine, the world, the US is with Ukraine, and this will be the last nail for Russia.”
Source: korrespondent
