Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk, who agreed to give up his country’s Soviet nuclear arsenal, the third-largest in the world, has died at the age of 88.
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 leaders of Russia and Belarus to sign an agreement on 8 December 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 US.
Source: www.theguardian.com
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