Viktor Yanukovych the armed forces of Ukraine not to intervene in the crisis. The exact whereabouts of Yanukovych when he made this statement remains unclear. He later thanked Vladimir Putin for "saving his life". According to an April 2014 poll conducted by the Razumkov Centre, only 4.9% of respondents would have liked to see Yanukovych return to the presidency. On 3 October 2014, several news agencies reported that according to a Facebook post made by the aide to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko, Viktor Yanukovych had been granted Russian citizenship by a "secret decree" of Vladimir Putin. On the same day,
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