Ukraine: Legislative elections - timeline
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Timeline
- June 2007. Confusion continues to surround the legitimacy of the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada (the unicameral legislature) as speaker Oleksandr Moroz defies a presidential decree dissolving the body. This marks the third failed attempt in two months by President Viktor Yushchenko to dissolve the Rada.
- May 2007. President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych agree to hold elections on Sept. 30.
- April 2007. President Yushchenko dissolves the Verkhovna Rada and calls early elections, alleging such action is necessary because of political corruption and attempts by some members of the legislature to usurp his power.
- March 2007. Members of the Our Ukraine (NU) and Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) factions in the Verkhovna Rada defect to the Party of Regions (PRU) and its allies, leaving the coalition unable to govern.
- February 2007. Conflict between President Yushchenko and the ruling coalition, led by Yanukovych’s PRU, comes to a head over the selection of a new foreign minister.
- November 2006. Tensions flare as Yanukovych’s PRU attempts to dismiss presidentially appointed ministers of defence, interior, and foreign affairs.
- October 2006. Four ministers from Yushchenko’s NU party resign from Yanukovych's government. Ukraine negotiates natural gas purchases from Russia at modest prices.
- August 2006. After months of political paralysis, Yushchenko allows Yanukovych to become prime minister.
- July 2006. Our Ukraine, BYuT, and the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU), wielding a slim majority with 243 seats, agree to form an “orange coalition”, but negotiations to appoint a government collapse in acrimony.
- May 2006. The prosecutor general’s office says it will challenge local decisions in Ukraine's south and east to grant Russian official-language status.
- March 2006. Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party fails to retain a parliamentary majority. PRU wins the largest percentage of the vote and the largest number of seats (186), with most of its support coming from the east and south.
- February 2006. The trial of three former police officers in the killing of investigative journalist Georgy Gongadze, murdered in apparent revenge for criticising the government, is postponed indefinitely.
- January 2006. Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, threatens to shut off Ukraine's gas supplies if the country refuses to meet a demand for a fivefold increase in the price of gas.
- January 2006. Gazprom accuses Ukraine of causing fuel shortages in Europe by siphoning off gas passing through the pipelines in its territory.
- October 2005. The Ukrainian government re-privatises a formerly state-owned steel works, reversing its sale in 2004 to a consortium of investors closely linked to then President Kuchma.
- September 2005. Yushchenko dismisses the government of Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko.
- April 2005. A diplomatic rift develops between Ukraine and Russia as Ukraine's Prime Minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko, postpones her first official trip to Russia, after a statement by Russia's prosecutor general Vladimir Ustinov that Russia had an arrest warrant against her.
- December 2004. Viktor Yushchenko wins the presidency after a second election, completing a power transition dubbed the “orange revolution”.
- November 2004. The alleged theft of the election by Russian-endorsed parties leads to round-the-clock demonstrations in Kiev (the capital) and other cities to force a rerun. In spite of public and international support for Yushchenko, significant support in the east and south remains for Yanukovych.
- October 2004. The Russian government declares its support of Yanukovych, as Russia's President Vladimir Putin visits Ukraine for a three-day visit.
- September 2004. A few weeks prior to the election, Yushchenko falls ill. It is eventually discovered that he has been poisoned with dioxin by his political enemies.
- February 2001. A scandal erupts as extracts from audio tapes reveal President Leonid Kuchma discussing vote-rigging in the 1999 elections.
- December 2000. Political opponents release an audio tape in which Kuchma appears to be discussing harm to journalist Georgiy Gongadze, who soon thereafter is murdered in apparent revenge for criticising the Kuchma government.
- November 1999. Incumbent president Kuchma is re-elected.
- December 1998. Former Prime Minister Lazarenko is arrested on charges of corruption as he tries to enter Switzerland.
- August 1998. The Ukrainian currency is badly affected by the Russian currency crisis.
- September 1996. Ukraine finally launches its national currency, the hryvna, at a starting value of 1.75 to a dollar, after three failed attempts.
- July 1994. Leonid Kuchma, 55, Ukrainian prime minister from October 1992 to September 1993, former manager of a missile-building enterprise in Dniepropetrovsk, is elected president, with 52 per cent of the vote.
- January 1994. Ukraine surrenders its nuclear weapon arsenal to be dismantled. US President Bill Clinton praises the “courageous decision”.
- August 1992. An agreement is reached with Russia over the deployment of the Black Sea fleet.
- May 1992. Friction builds with Russia over control of the fleet in the Crimea.
- January 1992. Ukraine sets up a makeshift currency after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- December 1991. The Soviet Union collapses; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns, a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is formed, with 11 former Soviet republics as members.
- December 1991. Ukraine holds a referendum that overwhelmingly declares independence. The chair of the Supreme Soviet, Leonid Kravchuk, is elected President.
- June 1986. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster is the largest in history.
- October 1982. Human rights monitoring of the Helsinki treaty is suspended after widespread detention in psychiatric facilities of several so-called Ukrainian dissidents.
- September 1980. The Soviet Union sentences several Ukrainian monitors of Soviet adherence to human rights provisions of the Helsinki conference to several years of hard labour for treason.
- July 1972. Petro Shelest, First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukraine, loses his position, having been seen as “too independent” by the government in Moscow.
- June 1968. Ukrainian intellectuals are tried and convicted for anti-Soviet ideas.
- December 1965. Nikolai Podgorny, a Ukrainian and food industry expert, succeeds Mr Mikoyan as President of the Soviet Union.
- April 1954. First secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Krushchev hands over Crimea to Ukraine, in spite of its largely Russian population, the original Tatar inhabitants having been deported during World War II.
- September 1953. Nikita Krushchev, a Ukrainian from the eastern portion of the country, becomes Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- June 1951. Populations are forcibly moved between Ukraine and Poland because of changes in the position of the border.
- July 1945. Polish and Ukrainian rebels wage an underground insurgency in Galicia to prevent the sovietisation of western Ukraine.
- June 1945. Transcarpathian Ukraine (Ruthenia) is ceded by Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union and incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.
- October 1943. Russian (Soviet) forces recapture Kiev.
- August 1941. Ukraine is overrun by Nazi Germany. A very large Nazi victory is achieved around Smolensk. Ukrainians initially welcome and collaborate with the Nazis.
- October 1939. The Soviet Union annexes eastern Poland and adds Galicia to Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). The territory includes the city of Lvov (Lviv).
- September 1939. The Soviet Union invades eastern Poland.
- February 1939. In aftermath of the Munich conference giving Nazi Germany control over Czechoslovakia, the Ukrainian nationalism increases.
- September 1934. Along with four other delegations representing nationalities included in the Soviet Union, Ukraine protests the admission of Soviet Russia to the League of Nations.
- 1933. Ukrainians suffer starvation due to a manufactured famine at the hands of Soviet dictator Marshal Joseph Stalin.
- May 1932. Ukraine sows less than one-third the land for food than it did in 1931.
- 1921. Ukraine suffers what many call the first man-made famine at the hands of the Soviet Union.
- 1921. Under the Treaty of Riga Russia and Poland partition Ukraine.
- 1919. Galicia unites with Ukraine; conflict escalates between Ukrainian nationalists, Bolsheviks, anarchists, White Russians, and Poles.
- 1918. Ukraine declares full independence; civil war ensues between Rada (backed by Germans) and Reds (backed by Russian Bolsheviks).
- 1917. The revolutionary parliament (Rada) proclaims Ukrainian autonomy within a federal Russia.
