Leonid Kravchuk, independent Ukraine’s first president, dead at 88
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called Kravchuk a wise leader who guided the country in the chaotic first years of independence
- Kravchuk agreed to transfer Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory to Russian control, in a deal backed by the US
Leonid Kravchuk, who led Ukraine to independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union and served as its first president, died on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said. He was 88.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to Kravchuk, calling him not just a historical figure but “a man who knew how to find wise words and to say them so that all Ukrainians would hear them”.
Zelensky said Kravchuk died Tuesday but gave no details of the circumstances. He had been in poor health and underwent a heart operation last year.
Kravchuk led Ukraine as its Communist Party boss in the waning years of the Soviet Union, and played a pivotal role in the demise of the USSR before holding the Ukrainian presidency from 1991 through 1994.
He was a driving force in Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and later that year joined with the leaders of Russia and Belarus to sign an agreement on December 8, 1991, which formally declared that the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
As president, Kravchuk agreed to transfer remaining Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory to Russian control, in a deal backed by the United States.
He lost the 1994 presidential election to former prime minister Leonid Kuchma. In 2020 he returned to politics to try to negotiate a settlement as part of a “contact group” for the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists had fought Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Twitter that with Kravchuk’s signature to the December 1991 agreement disbanding the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire disintegrated”.
“Thank you for the peaceful renewal of our Independence. We’re defending it now with weapons in our hands,” Reznikov wrote on Tuesday.
Kravchuk’s death comes a week after that of the first president of post-Soviet Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, who died aged 87 following treatment for Covid-19, according to his wife.
Since Shushkevich’s death, Kravchuk was the last survivor of the three leaders who signed the 1991 deal. Russian President Boris Yeltsin died in 2007 aged 76.
