Yushchenko's influence declined soon after assuming the presidency, especially after falling out with his prime minister and leading political ally Yulia Tymoshenko, as did his and his party's popularity and electoral standing.

The Sumy Oblast region where he was born is predominantly Ukrainian-speaking, and this differentiated him in later life from his political counterparts, for whom Russian was the mother tongue.

As a central banker, Yushchenko played an important part in the creation of Ukraine's national currency, the hryvnia, and the establishment of a modern regulatory system for commercial banking.

He also successfully overcame a debilitating wave of hyper-inflation that hit the country—he brought inflation down from more than 10,000 percent to less than 10 percent—and managed to defend the value of the currency following the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

In December 1999, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma unexpectedly nominated Yushchenko to be the prime minister after the parliament failed by one vote to ratify the previous candidate, Valeriy Pustovoytenko.

However, his government, particularly Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, soon became embroiled in a confrontation with influential leaders of the coal mining and natural gas industries.

The conflict resulted in a no-confidence vote by the parliament on 26 April 2001,[3] orchestrated by the Communist Party of Ukraine, who opposed Yushchenko's economic policies, and by centrist groups associated with the country's powerful "oligarchs."

In 2002, Yushchenko became the leader of the Our Ukraine (Nasha Ukrayina) political coalition, which received a plurality of seats in the year's parliamentary election.

[citation needed] In 2001, both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko broached at creating a broad opposition bloc against the incumbent President Kuchma in order to win the Ukrainian presidential election 2004.

Since his term as prime minister, Yushchenko had slightly modernized his political platform, adding social partnership and other liberal slogans to older ideas of European integration, including Ukraine's joining NATO and fighting corruption.

Yushchenko built his campaign on face-to-face communication with voters, since the government prevented most major TV channels from providing equal coverage to candidates.

[12][13] Meanwhile, his rival, Yanukovych, frequently appeared in the news and even accused Yushchenko, whose father was a Red Army soldier imprisoned at Auschwitz, of being "a Nazi,"[14][15] even though Yushchenko actively reached out to the Jewish community in Ukraine and his mother is said to have risked her life by hiding three Jewish girls for one and a half years during the Second World War.

He was flown to Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus clinic for treatment and diagnosed with acute pancreatitis, accompanied by interstitial edematous abnormalities, due to a serious viral infection and chemical substances that are not normally found in food products.

British toxicologist Professor John Henry of St Mary's Hospital in London declared the abnormalities in Yushchenko's face were due to chloracne, which results from dioxin poisoning.

[17] Dutch toxicologist Bram Brouwer also stated his abnormalities in appearance were the result of chloracne, and found dioxin levels in Yushchenko's blood 6,000 times above normal.

[18] On 11 December, Michael Zimpfer of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic declared that Yushchenko had ingested TCDD dioxin and had 1,000 times the usual concentration in his body.

[19] Many have linked Yushchenko's poisoning to a dinner with a group of senior Ukrainian officials (including Volodymyr Satsyuk) that took place on 5 September.

[22] In August 2009, The Lancet published a scientific paper by Swiss and Ukrainian researchers on the monitoring, form, distribution, and elimination of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) in Yushchenko in relation to his severe poisoning.

Petro Poroshenko, a fierce competitor of Tymoshenko for the post of prime minister, was appointed Secretary of the Security and Defense Council.

[29] During 2005, Yushchenko was in confident mood, making such pledges as solving the Gongadze case to the removal of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Also in September 2005, former president Leonid Kravchuk accused exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky of financing Yushchenko's presidential election campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money transfers from companies he said were controlled by Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yushchenko's official backers.

[35][36] Some consider the dissolution order illegal because none of the conditions spelled out under Article 90 of the Constitution of Ukraine for the president to dissolve the legislature had been met.

Political groups including members of his own Our Ukraine party contested the election decree and politicians vowed to challenge it in the courts.

Yushchenko removed the Kharkiv and Dniproptrovsk governors, who had expressed support for Tymoshenko and had refused to provide administrative resources for Yanukovych's campaign.

[65][66] Yushchenko's view differed from that of the European Union's (EU) foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who said in a statement the Tymoshenko verdict showed justice was being applied "selectively in politically motivated prosecutions".

[66] Late September 2011 Yushchenko stated he intended to run for parliament on an Our Ukraine party ticket at the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary elections.

[72] In an interview with the French radio station Europe 1 in March 2014, Yushchenko stated that he supported the Euromaidan protests and opposed the Russian invasion in Crimea, noting that in his view "Putin dreams of reconstructing the Soviet empire under the name of Russia.

He is keen on painting, collects antiques, folk artifacts, and Ukrainian national dress, and restores objects of Trypillya culture.

After receiving a checkup in which doctors determined he was healthy despite the previous year's dioxin poisoning, he successfully climbed the mountain again on 16 July 2005.

His opponents (and allies) sometimes criticize him for indecision and secrecy, while his advocates argue that the same attributes indicate Yushchenko's commitment to teamwork, consensus, and negotiation.