Mykola Azarov

Mykola Yanovych Azarov (; ; né Pakhlo, Cyrillic: Пахло; born 17 December 1947) is a Ukrainian politician who was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 11 March 2010 to 27 January 2014. He was the First Vice Prime Minister and Finance Minister from 2002 to 2005 and again from 2006 to 2007. Azarov also served ex officio as an acting Prime Minister in the First Yanukovych Government when Viktor Yanukovych ran for president at first and then upon the resignation of his government. Following the victory of Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential election, Azarov succeeded Yanukovych as leader of the Party of Regions and was appointed as Prime Minister in March 2010. In January 2014, after weeks of Euromaidan protests and the 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots, Azarov offered his letter of resignation. After the Revolution of Dignity, Azarov fled to Russia and according to Azarov himself, was allegedly offered "political refugee status on the personal instructions of Vladimir Putin". Since then he has been reportedly living in the vicinity of the Russian village of Petrovo-Dalneye, near Moscow. Since July 2014, Azarov has been on the international wanted list for alleged abuse of power. On 19 January 2015 Kyiv District Court of Pechersk Raion issued an arrest warrant as a preventive measure to allow for the extradition of Azarov from the Russian Federation. Azarov is currently the subject of international sanctions from the U.S., European Union, Norway, Canada, and Switzerland due to his role in the Euromaidan. In 2015, he set up the Ukraine Salvation Committee a government in exile that was widely seen as a pro-Russian puppet. Early life, education and career Azarov was born in Kaluga on 17 December 1947 in the Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, to a half-Russian and half-Estonian father, Jaan Pahlo, and a Russian mother, Yekaterina Pavlovna Kvasnikova, as Nikolay Pakhlo. When he married his wife, Lyudmila Azarova, he took her name. Azarov attended the Moscow State University where he earned his doctorate in geology and mineralogy in 1973. He worked at the Tulaugol coal enterprise until 1976. Azarov moved to Donetsk permanently in 1984 to become deputy director of the Ukrainian State Geological Institute, that he went on to head. In 1984–1995 he was a deputy director and director of Ukraine's State Research and Design Institute of Mining Geology and Geomechanics. In 1991 he was hired as a professor at Donetsk National Technical University.