President of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014
Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (Ukrainian: Ві́ктор Фе́дорович Януко́вич, Russian: Виктор Фёдорович Янукович; born 9 July 1950) is a Ukrainian politician who served as the fourth President of Ukraine from 2010 until he was removed from office in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. From 2006 to 2007 he was the prime minister of Ukraine; he also served in this post from November 2002 to January 2005, with a short interruption in December 2004. After rejecting the Ukrainian-European Association Agreement, Yanukovych was ousted from office in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. He currently lives in exile in Russia. On 18 June 2015, Yanukovych was officially deprived of the title of President of Ukraine by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. On 24 January 2019, he was sentenced in absentia to thirteen years' imprisonment for high treason by a Ukrainian court, which was affirmed on appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Yanukovych was known for his numerous gaffes, which often relate to his poor knowledge of Ukrainian, malapropisms, Freudian slips, geography mistakes, or general errors of speech. Earlier speeches could sometimes include aggressive rhetoric, while some examples (not shown due to their intranslateability) have sparked controversy due to the employment of criminal jargon.
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<small>In response to the opposition's calls to fire some of his ministers</small> I've recalled, you know, the film called The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed. Have you heard, how was he...? How was he called? Vysotsky!.. (prompted) Zheglov! Yeah. As he said: "You'll only get a bagel of a bublik, not Sharapov..." Or how did it go? "Hole of a bublik"! That's right. We understand these are only dirty political games.
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One should always remember that no victory can be achieved without losing. Burning bridges is never an option in politics, never.
Such outrageous actions can have really bad consequences.
I never took the liberty they afforded – to unleash war on an entire region, running people over with tanks and using artillery, and for what?
For not liking you or treating you somewhat below par?
Or having an opinion of their own about their future?
This is wrong.
If you take the history of any country, it never ended well for those who came to power through bloodshed.
No amount of power is worth spilling even a drop of blood to obtain.
That’s my fundamental principle, but they chose a different path.
I was in the opposition twice. I was in power twice before this, and this is my third time. Before this I was Prime Minister twice, and now I am President. The political process is constant, and our goal is for it to move forward under civilized rules, under the laws and for there to be no chance for politicians to abuse their power.
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But in our situation, we do not have the goal of locking up our political opponents. I can prove this, with facts. Let the opposition say the opposite. But watch the television, and you will see that the ruling government does not appear there at all. The opposition takes up 99% [of airtime]. They behave in a radical way, and nobody locks them up.
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I’m sure that the number of friends we have is only growing. We are open. We are not fooling anyone. We are pursuing a stable policy … We passed the tax code, the pension reform, the budget code, the customs code, now the criminal code. No one could do that in 20 years. People close their eyes and pretend not to see these things. Well, so be it. We’ll do it just for ourselves … If Europe has decided to take a pause, then so be it. It’ll probably work out for the best both for us and for Europe. If Europe does not see us as part of Europe, we will build Europe here in Ukraine.