[1][2] Born in Proskuriv, Ukraine (modern Khmelnytskyi), Rutskoy served with great distinction as an air force officer during the Soviet–Afghan War, for which he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

After a two-week standoff and popular unrest, Yeltsin ordered the military to storm the parliament building, arrested Rutskoy and formally dismissed him as vice president.

On the third occasion, his Su-25 aircraft entered Pakistani airspace over Miranshah, and was shot down by a PAF F-16 Falcon flown by Squadron Leader Athar Bukhari from the No.

[8] In October 1991 Rutskoy went to Kyiv in order to negotiate the price of Russian natural gas exports to Ukraine, and through Ukrainian territory to Europe.

The Ukrainians naturally turned for help to the United States, which sought to aggregate Soviet nuclear weapons in the hands of Moscow and to occupy ex-Soviet scientists with the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme.

The Budapest Memorandum provided security assurances to the three ex-Soviet countries Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in exchange to their accession to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

[9] Following the initial period of peaceful collaboration with Yeltsin, from the end of 1992, Rutskoy began openly declaring his opposition to the President's economic and foreign policies and accusing some Russian government officials of corruption.

On 1 September 1993, President Boris Yeltsin suspended Rutskoy's execution of his vice-presidential duties, due to alleged corruption charges,[12] which was not further confirmed.

On the night of 21–22 September 1993, Rutskoy ascended the podium of the Russian parliament,[14] and assumed the powers of acting President of Russia at 00:25, in accordance with the above article.

[16] Rutskoy was imprisoned in the Moscow Lefortovo prison[17] until 26 February 1994,[18] when he and other participants of both the August 1991 and October 1993 crises were granted amnesty by the State Duma.

[19] Soon after his release, Rutskoy founded a populist, nationalist party, Derzhava (Russian: Держава), which failed in the 1995 legislative election to the State Duma, gathering only about 2.5% of the votes and thus not passing the 5% threshold.

It is noted that Rutskoy had the potential to become an opposition leader upon re-entering politics but he adopted a pragmatic and compliant approach in his dealings with the government in Moscow in general and Yeltsin in particular.

[24] In the 2016 Russian legislative election, he again ran for the State Duma as part of the federal list of the party Patriots of Russia and the single-member constituency in Kursk Oblast.