Yanukovych: The man who provokes Ukraine's wrath

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was in 2004 one of the villains of the country's Orange Revolution uprising that forced the annulment of rigged elections he claimed to have won. A decade later he seems to be cast as the bad guy again.   Yanukovych, who defeated Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko in a poll in 2010 and then saw her sentenced to seven years in prison, risks losing power to huge protests sparked by the scrapping of a landmark cooperation deal with the EU. "Yanukovych risks going down in history as a man who over the past 10 years has twice been deprived of power by the square," said Russia's liberal Vedomosti daily, referring to mass protests in the capital Kiev. In a matter of weeks, ex-Soviet Ukraine's fourth president has gone from a statesman seeking to guide Kiev closer toward EU membership to an autocratic leader brutally dispersing protests. Hours after Yanukovych refused to sign an agreement that would have marked a historic break from Soviet-era master Moscow, riot police used batons, stun grenades and tear gas to break up an opposition rally calling for the president's resignation. Outraged by the use of violence, more than 100,000 poured out into the streets in Kiev and western Ukraine, in the largest demonstration since the Orange Revolution. Three main opposition parties announced the establishment of a "resistance task force" and demanded Yanukovych's resignation. The barrel-chested leader, 63, put his last-minute U-turn down to Ukraine's precarious economic situation, pressure from the Kremlin and a lack of economic support from the bloc. "I've been by myself for three-and-a-half years," Yanukovych complained to German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the summit in Vilnius, speaking Russian. "I've been one-on-one in very unequal conditions with a very strong Russia." But many say Yanukovych's fears for his personal future trumped his concerns over the country's direction. Analysts have pointed out that Yanukovych could not afford to release his arch rival Tymoshenko ahead of 2015 presidential elections, a key EU condition for the agreement. Traditionally seen as a representative of Ukraine's Russian-speaking east that leans toward Moscow, Yanukovych has over the past years sought to broaden his appeal and has vastly improved his skills in Ukrainian, the country’s sole official language. A political streetfighter Formed as a politician in the rough-and-tough surroundings of his heavily industrial native Donetsk region, the burly Yanukovych is no stranger to the art of political survival and re-invention. Hoping to defuse the current political crisis, Yanukovych condemned the violence against demonstrators and pledged to continue working toward EU integration. "We are a European people, and our path has been predetermined historically," he said. Yanukovych prides himself as a political streetfighter who can claw his way out of any corner in life and in politics. But whether he will be able to hold on to power in the face of nationwide protests is now anyone's guess. He has been dogged by allegations of an excessive penchant for luxury at a time of economic trouble, with critical journalists focusing on his personal riverside residence of Mezhygirya outside Kiev. In recent years a so-called family of influential officials and relatives has also grown around him, including Yanukovych’s increasingly affluent businessman son Olexander. Equally important is a group of billionaire oligarchs who are believed to have a huge say in decision-making, including the owner of the Shakhtar Donetsk football club Rinat Akhmetov and energy tycoon Dmytro Firtash. Orphaned just two years into his life, Yanukovych has related how he ran around the streets barefooted and was brought up in abject poverty by his grandmother. He fell in with a local street gang in the late 1960s under the Soviet Union and was convicted of robbery in 1967 and assault in 1970. He served jail terms on both occasions but his record was much later mysteriously cleared. He then worked for two decades as a transport manager in Donetsk before moving into politics in the late 1990s. He became the region's governor in 1997 and rose to become prime minister under president Leonid Kuchma in 2002. His wife Lyudmila, who Yanukovych married in 1972, has kept the lowest of low profiles during his presidency and has virtually disappeared from public life.