Leonid Kuchma

Biography

Leonid Kuchma was born in 1938 in the village of Chaikyne in Chernihiv Oblast; his father was killed in the Second World War. He joined the Communist Party and graduated in engineering physics from Dnipropetrovsk State University in 1960.

He spent his early career at the Pivdenne design bureau, working on Soviet missiles including the R-36 and serving as a test director at Baikonur, and became head of the party committee at the Pivdenmash plant in 1976. From 1986 he directed Pivdenmash, the Soviet Union's main maker of intercontinental missiles.

Elected to the Ukrainian parliament in 1990, he was prime minister from October 1992 to September 1993, pressing market reforms against strong resistance before resigning. He defeated President Leonid Kravchuk in the 1994 election and was re-elected in 1999. His presidency brought the 1996 constitution, the hryvnia and privatisation, and later economic growth, but also widespread corruption, pressure on the media and the rise of oligarchs.

From late 2000 the Cassette Scandal, in which secret recordings appeared to link him to the killing of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, set off mass protests. He did not run in 2004 and acted as a mediator during the Orange Revolution, leaving office in January 2005. He later represented Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group on the Donbas war and signed the Minsk II agreement in 2015. Attempts to prosecute him over Gongadze's death were dropped.