Natalia Vitrenko

Nataliya Mikhailivna Vitrenko (Ukrainian: Натáлія Михáйлівна Вітрéнко) (born December 28, 1951 in Kiev) is a Ukrainian politician and scientist. She has a Ph.D in Statistics and Dr. of Social Sciences.

She was a candidate in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, nominated by the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, which she has chaired since 1996. In the Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2002 her party won 3.22% of the votes. She was a presidential candidate in 1999, when she won 11% of the votes to finish in 4th place. In the 2004 elections, however, she finished in fifth place and received less than 5% of the vote.

On October 2, 1999, Vitrenko was attacked and wounded following a campaign rally when two unknown assailants threw two hand grenades at a crowd gathered outside one of her campaign events.

Natalia Vitrenko was again nominated by the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine as candidate for the Ukrainian presidential election, 2010 but the CECoU (Central Election Commission of Ukraine) refused to register her for failure to pay the required 2.5 million hryvnya nomination deposit. Vitrenko did not agree with the refusal, submitted a complaint to the judge and before his very eyes tore down the Ukrainian constitution as a protest. On November 11, 2009, Vitrenko said: "Ukraine is condemned either to collapse, or to make a revolution. To Ukrainian government, Constitution of Ukraine is nothing but toilet paper." Vitrenko's 1999 campaign was characterized by the Ukrainian Weekly as "fierce populism, nostalgia for the Soviet era, and strong anti-Western sentiments".

Andrew Madison, writing in Vremya Novostei, said that Vitrenko's ideological foundations were partially American in origin, because along with the Marxism she was also influenced by the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche. On her political website, Vitrenko says that she has very similar views to LaRouche on the sinister role of the International Monetary Fund and the dollarization of speculative capital, which she says has become a threat to humanity. She attended a conference in 1995 in Germany, organized by Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, which passed a "Memorandum of humanity" drafted by Vitrenko.

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