Viktor Yanukovych was born in the village of Zhukovka near Yenakiieve in Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. He endured a very hard childhood about which he has stated, "My childhood was difficult and hungry. I grew up without my mother who died when I was two. I went around bare-footed on the streets. I had to fight for myself every day." Yanukovych is of Russian, Polish, and Belarusian descent. Yanukovych is a surname of Belarusian origin; "Yanuk" being a derivative of the Catholic name "Yan" ("John"). His mother was a Russian nurse and his father was a Polish-Belarusian locomotive-driver, originally from Yanuki, in the Dokshytsy Raion of the Vitsebsk Voblast in present-day Belarus. By the time he was a teenager, Yanukovych had lost both his parents and was brought up by his Polish paternal grandmother, originally from Warsaw. His grandfather and great-grandparents were Lithuanian-Poles. Yanukovych has half-sisters from his father's remarriage, but has no contact with them.