"My grandfather and great-grandparents were Lithuanian Poles. It was only my father who was born in the Donbas, where he married a woman from Russia – all of my other ancestors came from Poland. My grandmother told me that she was born in Warsaw. Her mother died, and her father got married again, to a Lithuanian Pole who lived in Vilnius. After the October Revolution, my family moved to Vitebsk, where my grandmother married my grandfather, who lived in Dokshytsy, near the village of Yanuki. An only from Belarus [did my family move] to the Ukrainian Donbas, where I was born," he said in an interview with Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper published on Tuesday.

Yanukovych told Polish journalists that Warsaw remained a strategic partner for Kyiv. In addition, he noted that he wanted, above all, to develop economic cooperation between the two countries, as well as establish historical unity in the spirit of the formula "We forgive and ask for forgiveness," the newspaper wrote.

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As reported, Yanukovych is to make a state visit to Poland on February 3-4.

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