KYIV (Reuters – Leonid Kravchuk, a communist former who signed the death warrant for the Soviet Union and was then elected the first President of an independent Ukraine at age 88, was confirmed by a senior official on Tuesday.

Andriy Yarmak, Chief of Staff to President Volodymyr Zeleskiy said that it was a sad loss.

He wrote online, “He was wise and patriotic of Ukraine. A true historical figure in our independence.”

As he rose up the ranks of Ukraine’s communist party and became head of the parliament of what was then Soviet-controlled Ukraine in 1990, Kravchuk earned the nickname “wily Fox”.

He resigned from the party shortly after a coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in August 1991. The same month, the Ukrainian parliament approved a declaration of independence.

Kravchuk was granted temporary presidential powers and elected president Dec. 1, 1991. On the same day that Ukrainian voters voted for secession from Soviet Union, Kravchuk became the first Ukrainian president.

The Belovezha agreement with Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Stanislav Shichkevich from Belarus was signed a few days later. It effectively started the fall of the Soviet Union.

Kravchuk stated that he understood Ukraine would never become independent without the USSR (Soviet Union). “I went there with the knowledge that Ukrainians wanted to be independent. They were my will.”

Yeltsin died in 2007 while Shushkevich died last week.

With Ukraine in crisis economic and corrupt, and Kravchuk being accused of “plundering”, he lost the 1994 election to Leonid Kuuchma, ex-head of the missile plant. He was still in the parliament through 2006.

Kravchuk became a white-haired older statesman in 2020 and was appointed as the representative of Ukraine for efforts to end conflict in Ukraine that broke out between Russian-backed separatists in 2014 and pro-government forces.

While taking a firm stance towards Moscow, he stated that Russia’s objective was “to destroy Ukraine” and it wasn’t worth expecting any from them.

He signed an agreement in January 1994 with U.S. President Bill Clinton, Yeltsin. This included $1 billion of compensation for Ukraine’s surrender to its post-Soviet nuke arsenal, which was the third-largest in the world.

President Obama also signed a Cooperation Agreement with the European Union.

Kravchuk was conceived near Rivne, western Ukraine, on January 10, 1934.