Viktor Yanukovych second round of the 2010 presidential election as a choice between "bad and very bad" and praised (the candidate eliminated in the first round of the election) Arseniy Yatsenyuk instead. In another January 2009 cable (then) Ambassador of Ukraine to Russia Kostyantyn Gryshchenko stated that Putin had a low personal regard for Yanukovych. In another Wikileaks diplomatic cable, Volodymyr Horbulin, one of Ukraine's most respected policy strategists and former presidential advisor to then-President Viktor Yushchenko, told the United States Ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst in 2006 that Yanukovych's Party of Regions was partly composed of "pure criminals" and "criminal
Oleksandr Yanukovych for Oleksandr. In 2017, however, Interpol removed all data on the pair, and confirmed that Oleksandr was not on the wanted list. In 2017, Swiss authorities confirmed that Oleksandr Yanukovych did not have any personal bank accounts or assets in Switzerland, apart from those owned by MAKO Trading SA. In October, the ECJ (European Court of Justice) upheld sanctions against Oleksandr and his father. In March 2015, Yanukovych's younger brother was reported to have drowned after a vehicle he was travelling in fell through ice in Siberia. News reports at the time highlighted several similar deaths of people with ties