Vitold Pavlovych Fokin
Вітольд Павлович Фокін
From Soviet economic planner to independent Ukraine’s first prime minister
In 2016, the man who had signed away the USSR revealed his own grief: 'As a man, I'm ashamed to admit it, but when Crimea was annexed, I cried like a child.'
Vitold Fokin was a Ukrainian Soviet economic official who began as a mining engineer and experienced both the operation of a planned economy and the pressures of state transformation. He led Ukraine’s government around independence while confronting economic crisis and the collapse of the Union. In December 1991, he signed the Belovezha Accords for Ukraine alongside Leonid Kravchuk, helping establish the post-Soviet order. Late in life, his controversial positions in the Donbas negotiations ended his public role.
Career timeline
- 1954–1963Mining engineer and manager in the Luhansk region
- 1963–1971Manager in the Donbas anthracite industry
- 1971–1987Department head and deputy chair of Ukraine’s State Planning Committee
- 1987–1990Deputy chair of Ukraine’s Council of Ministers and head of the State Planning Committee
- 1990–1991Chair of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR
- 1991–1992First prime minister of Ukraine
- 1991Ukrainian signatory of the Belovezha Accords
- 2020First deputy head of Ukraine’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group