Viktor Yanukovych the sister of his former cook of the Mezhyhirya Residence. Polezhay also lived in the Mezhyhirya Residence and left Ukraine with Yanukovych in 2014. "Ukrayinska Pravda" claims that during Yanukovych presidency his wife Lyudmyla lived separately in Donetsk. After the start of the War in Donbass she reportedly moved to Crimea. In March 2012, Yanukovych stated it was "a problem" for him in 2002 to speak Ukrainian but that "once I had the opportunity to speak Ukrainian, I started to do it with pleasure". Until 2004, Yanukovych was known as "batia" ("Dad") among his family members, but since that time
Oleksandr Turchynov political figure from Dnipropetrovsk. They used to have a common business in Dnipropetrovsk. In December 1993, Turchynov co-founded and became Vice President of Ukrainian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs. In 1994 he created the political party Hromada together with Pavlo Lazarenko, a business ally of Tymoshenko. Turchynov was also director of the Economic Reforms Institute from January 1994 to March 1998 and was head of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences' Laboratory of Shadow Economy Research. In 1998, he was elected to parliament as a member of Hromada but after the scandal around Lazarenko, he left the faction and party