Leonid Kravchuk, a one-time Communist Party apparatchik who became the first president of an independent Ukraine, playing a central role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and relinquishing his country’s nuclear weapons stockpile in the aftermath of the Cold War, has died aged 88.
With a population of more than 50 million, Ukraine was the second largest of the USSR’s 15 republics and, with its declaration of independence in 1991, became a pivotal player in the final days of the Soviet era.
