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
Viktor Yanukovych with them. On 15 December 1967, at the age of 17, Yanukovych was sentenced to three years incarceration for participating in a robbery and assault. On 8 June 1970 he was convicted for a second time on charges of assault. He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and did not appeal against the verdict. Decades later, Yanukovych characterized his arrests and incarceration as "mistakes of youth". In 1971, Yanukovych married Lyudmyla (née Nastenko), a niece of Yenakiyeve city judge Oleksandr Sazhyn. In July 1974, Yanukovych enrolled at the Donetsk Polytechnic Institute. In 1976, as a second-year student, he was