Kateryna Yushchenko

Kateryna Mykhaylivna Yushchenko ( _uk. Катерина Михайлівна Ющенко) (born Katherine Chumachenko on September 1, 1961 in Chicago, Illinois; father: Mikhailo (1917-1998); mother: Sofia (1927- )) is the current and second wife of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. She is Ukrainian who was born in the U.S. and a former official with the U.S. State Department, where she worked as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. She holds a bachelor degree in International Economics from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (1982), and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (1986).

She later worked in the White House in the Office of Public Liaison during the administration of Ronald Reagan. Subsequently, she worked at the U.S. Treasury in the executive secretary's office during the administration of George H. W. Bush. After leaving that position, she was on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress. After Ukraine declared its freedom, she was a co-founder and the vice-president of Ukraine-USA Foundation. She was also the director of Pylyp Orlyk Institute. In 1993 Chumachenko went to work in Ukraine for KPMG, an international accounting firm, where she met Viktor Yushchenko, whom she subsequently married.

Opponents of her husband Viktor Yushchenko have criticized her for remaining a U.S. citizen. During the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election campaign, Yushchenko-Chumachenko was accused of exerting the influence of the U.S. government on her husband's decisions, as an employee of the U.S. government or even a Central Intelligence Agency agent. She had earlier been accused by Russian television journalist Mikhail Leontyev of leading a U.S. project to help Yushchenko seize power in Ukraine; in January 2002, she won a libel case against him. Ukraine's pro-government Inter television channel repeated Leontyev's allegations in 2001, but in January 2003 she won a libel case against the channel as well.

On March 31, 2005, Kateryna Yushchenko was announced to have become a naturalized Ukrainian citizen.

The Yushchenkos have five children together: two sons and three daughters.

External links

* [http://www.yuschenko.com.ua/eng/Private/Family/2822/ Kateryna Yushchenko. Biography]
* [http://www.yuschenko.com.ua/eng/present/Mass_media/984/ Interview with Yushchenko-Chumachenko, from Yushchenko's campaign site]