Leonid Kravchuk, independent Ukraine’s 1st president, dies

KYIV, Ukraine: Leonid Kravchuk, who led Ukraine to independence amid the collapse of the Soviet Union and served as its first president, has died, Ukrainian officers stated Tuesday. He was 88.
Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s workplace, confirmed Kravchuk’s demise on the social media app Telegram with out giving particulars of the circumstances. Kravchuk had been unwell and underwent a coronary heart operation final yr.
Kravchuk led Ukraine as its Communist Occasion boss within the waning years of the Soviet Union, and performed a pivotal position within the demise of the USSR earlier than holding the Ukrainian presidency from 1991 by way of 1994.
He was a driving pressure in Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and later that yr joined leaders of Russia and Belarus to signal an settlement on Dec. 8, 1991, which formally declared that the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
As president, Kravchuk agreed to switch remaining Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory to Russian management, in a deal backed by the USA.
He misplaced the 1994 presidential election to former prime minister Leonid Kuchma. In 2020 he returned to politics to attempt to negotiate a settlement as a part of a “contact group” for the battle in jap Ukraine, the place Russia-backed separatists had fought Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Ukrainian Protection Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Twitter that with Kravchuk’s signature to the Dec. 1991 settlement disbanding the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire disintegrated.”
“Thanks for the peaceable renewal of our Independence. We’re defending it now with weapons in our fingers,” Reznikov wrote Tuesday.
Kravchuk’s demise comes every week after that of the primary president of post-Soviet Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, who died aged 87 following therapy for COVID-19, in keeping with his spouse.
Since Shushkevich’s demise, Kravchuk was the final survivor of the three leaders who signed the 1991 deal. Russian president Boris Yeltsin died in 2007 aged 76.
Since annexing Crimea from Ukraine and throwing its weight behind the 2014 separatist insurgency in jap Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to solid doubt on Ukraine’s statehood and falsely painting the nation as a synthetic assemble of Communist rule — rhetoric that paved the way in which for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In a televised deal with Feb. 21, three days earlier than the invasion, Putin blamed “historic, strategic errors” by Communist leaders for having led to the collapse of the Soviet state. Ukraine “turned to us for monetary help many instances from the very second they declared independence,” Putin stated in an obvious reference to Kravchuk’s time in workplace.
Some members within the historic Dec. 8 assembly at a looking lodge within the Belovezha forest, in what’s now Belarus, pointed to Kravchuk as having performed the primary position within the demise of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine had declared its sovereignty after an August coup by hard-line Communist Occasion members weakened Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s authority. Per week earlier than the Belovezha settlement, Kravchuk was elected president of Ukraine in a vote that additionally overwhelmingly accepted its independence from Moscow.
Members within the Belovezha talks stated Kravchuk rejected any efforts to maintain the Soviet Union going with reforms.
“Kravchuk was targeted on Ukraine’s independence,” Belarusian chief Shushkevich, who took half within the talks and signed the deal, informed The Related Press in an interview final yr. “He was proud that Ukraine declared its independence in a referendum and he was elected president on Dec. 1, 1991.”