Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko (Ukrainian: Віктор Андрійович Ющенко) (born February 23, 1954) is the current President of Ukraine.
As an informal leader of the Ukrainian opposition coalition, he was one of two main candidates in the October–November 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. The eventful election was won by Yushchenko through a revote of the runoff between him and Viktor Yanukovych, the government supported candidate. The revote, called for by the decision of the Ukrainian Supreme Court due to wide-spread election fraud in favor of the governmental candidate in the original run-off, was handily won by Yushchenko (52% to 44%). The public protests prompted by election fraud played a major role in that presidential election; and the term Orange Revolution, of which Yushchenko is considered a leader, is interchangeably applied to the protests or the election itself. |