Kravchuk, Ukraine's first president, dies

"He was a person always able to find wise words and express them in such a way that they were heard by all Ukrainians," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Tuesday.

"Particularly in times of crisis. When the future of an entire country can depend on the wisdom of one person."

Kravchuk, the president said, displayed such wisdom as Ukraine's national movement gained strength in the late 1980s, culminating in a December 1991 referendum in which more than 90 per cent of voters chose independence.

Kravchuk was elected president the same day.

"He acted brilliantly in 1991 and it is only now that appears that things were easy for him," Zelenskiy said.

Kravchuk became known as the "wily fox" as he rose through the ranks of Ukraine's Communist Party, taking over as head of parliament in what was then a Soviet republic in 1990.

But he quit the party soon after a failed coup coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. Ukraine's parliament adopted a declaration of independence the same month.

In December 1991, he signed the Belovezha accords with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich, which effectively triggered the Soviet Union's collapse.

"I understood Ukraine could never be really independent if the USSR still existed," Kravchuk said. "I came there knowing Ukrainians' aspirations to be independent. I was fulfilling their will."

Yeltsin died in 2007 while Shushkevich died last week.

In 1994, with Ukraine mired in economic crisis and corruption and Kravchuk facing accusations of "plundering" the country, he was defeated at the polls by former missile factory boss Leonid Kuchma. He remained in parliament until 2006.

In 2020, Kravchuk represented Ukraine in efforts to end the conflict that broke out in 2014 between Russian-backed separatists and pro-government forces in eastern Ukraine.