Oleksandr Yanukovych takes Russian citizenship amid sanctions

"The Moscow Times" notes that the 51-year-old Oleksandr Yanukovych had previously registered a company in Russia offering financial and industrial services in St. Petersburg. At that time, government documents indicated he was a citizen of Ukraine. However, this was set to change.

"The state news agency RIA Novosti reported that he now appears in documents as a Russian citizen, but did not specify when Yanukovych received the new citizenship," the newspaper highlights.

Oleksandr Yanukovych is the son of the former pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine after the Euromaidan events in February 2014. The Ukrainian Parliament subsequently removed Viktor Yanukovych from power.

Reuters reported that Viktor Yanukovych equated the revolution at that time in the country to "the Nazi takeover in the 1930s in Germany," and he referred to the protesters on the Maidan as "gangsters." In 2023, the current President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, revoked former President Yanukovych's Ukrainian citizenship as part of an effort to "cleanse" the country of pro-Russian influences.

Viktor Yanukovych and his son Oleksandr were placed on the sanctions list in 2022 and were banned from entering the European Union. Their assets were also frozen. The sanctions list, which included both Yanukovyches, names individuals, entities, and bodies subject to sanctions for undermining the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine or threatening its stability and security. In Oleksandr Yanukovych's case, there is an additional charge of conducting transactions with separatists in Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

The former president's younger son, Viktor Yanukovych Jr., died in 2015. He reportedly drowned in Lake Baikal.