Vitali Volodymyrovych Klitschko (19 July 1971-) was a People's Deputy of Ukraine from 12 December 2012 to 15 June 2014 and Mayor of Kiev from 5 June 2014. Klitschko, a former boxer, founded the liberal UDAR party, and he later became a Petro Poroshenko Bloc politician.
Biography[]
Vitali Volodymyrovych Klitschko was born in Belovodskoye, Kirghiz SSR, Soviet Union (now Kyrgyzstan) on 19 July 1971 to a family of Ukrainians, and Vitali and his brother Wladimir became professional boxers. He became a three-time world heavyweight champion, and the brothers dominated heavyweight boxing from 2006 to 2015.
In 2006, Klitschko placed second in the Kiev mayoral race, and he founded the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) in 2010. He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada for his party in 2012, and he became a leading figure in the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests and a potential presidential candidate before supporting Petro Poroshenko for that position. In 2015, his party merged into the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. Klitschko also served as Mayor of Kiev, being elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2015. In May 2019, he withdrew UDAR from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc to compete in the parliamentary elections autonomously, but his party failed to win any seats in the Verkhovna Rada.