The Party of Regions (Ukrainian: Партія регіонів, romanized: Partija rehioniv, pronounced [ˈpɑrt⁽ʲ⁾ijɐ reɦiˈɔn⁽ʲ⁾iu̯]; Russian: Партия регионов, romanized: Partija regionov) is a pro-Russia political party of Ukraine created in late 1997 that then grew to be the biggest party of Ukraine between 2006 and 2014. Since the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution, the party has not competed in elections and most of its representatives have left the party to continue their careers in other parties. The best known former party members are former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych; both fled to Russia in February 2014.
The Party of Regions (Ukrainian: Партія регіонів, romanized: Partija rehioniv, pronounced [ˈpɑrt⁽ʲ⁾ijɐ reɦiˈɔn⁽ʲ⁾iu̯]; Russian: Партия регионов, romanized: Partija regionov) is a pro-Russia political party of Ukraine created in late 1997 that then grew to be the biggest party of Ukraine between 2006 and 2014. Since the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution, the party has not competed in elections and most of its representatives have left the party to continue their careers in other parties. The best known former party members are former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych; both fled to Russia in February 2014. The party was created on 26 October 1997, just prior to the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, under the name of Party of Regional Revival of Ukraine and led by Volodymyr Rybak. Throughout its existence the party has contained different political groups with diverging ideological outlooks. The party was reorganized later in 2001 when it united with several others. According to the party's leadership in 2002, from the creation of the party to the end of 2001 the number of members jumped from 30,000 to 500,000. The party claims to ideologically defend and uphold the rights of ethnic Russians and speakers of the Russian language in Ukraine. It originally supported president Leonid Kuchma and joined the pro-government For United Ukraine alliance during the parliamentary elections on 30 March 2002. Its electoral and financial base has always been located primarily in the east and south-east of Ukraine, where it got wide popular electoral support. In the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast the party claimed in 2010 to have over 700,000 members. The party was supported mostly by people older than 45 years. In 2010, the party candidate Viktor Yanukovych won the presidential elections. Due to the rule of the party in Crimea particularly in 2010–2014, it gave a new meaning for "Makedonians" (Russian: македонцы) as the Makeevka-Donetsk clan associated with the Crimean Prime Ministers Vasyl Dzharty and Anatoliy Mohyliov. The party won 185 seats in the Ukrainian parliament in the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election. On 12 December 2012 it formed a parliamentary faction of 210 deputies. During the 2014 Ukrainian revolution on February 20, 2014, several party members called for the disintegration of Ukraine and a union with the Russian Federation. Oleksandr Yefremov, leader of the Ukrainian parliamentary faction in full support of these proposed actions, and Vladimir Konstantinov, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea went to Luhansk to support these decisive actions. On 23 February 2014 the Party of Regions condemned and disassociated itself from Victor Yanukovych for corruption, "criminal orders", his escape, and "cowardice". The following months more than 120 MPs left the party's parliamentary faction. Many members of the party became objects of the so called "trash bucket challenge". The party did not participate in the 2014 parliamentary elections. In the following months, the majority of its representatives continued their political careers predominantly with Opposition Bloc, Revival or Our Land. At same time, due to annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and after Vladimir Konstantinov announced of reorganization of the Party of Regions Crimean branch, members of Party of Regions joined the United Russia. Officially according to the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) and the former leader of the Crimean Party of Region Konstantinov, there is no succession of the United Russia Crimean branch from the Party of Regions Crimean branch, but, according to several local news resources from Sevastopol, in reality it was organized from former activists of Party of Regions and Russian Unity.