the Ukrainian parliamentary election the party was a member of the For United Ukraine electoral bloc. It was then led by Volodymyr Semynozhenko. From 21 November 2002 until 7 December 2004, Viktor Yanukovych was Prime Minister of Ukraine. At a congress held on 19 April 2003 Viktor Yanukovych was elected party leader, succeeding Volodymyr Semynozhenko. At that time the party had 20 seats in parliament. Electoral breakthrough The party shifted its political ideology to the left and became much more populist in nature before the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election and, as a result, Yanukovych won over a large part of the Communist party's electorate in eastern Ukraine. The party announced support for making Russian a second official language in Ukraine, a pro-Russian foreign policy, and increased social spending. It also advocates the regionalist ideology, and many members support making Ukraine a federation. The Party of Regions moved to opposition after its candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, lost the 2004 presidential election. The party leader first claimed an electoral victory, but strong allegations of electoral fraud triggered a series of events commonly known as the Orange Revolution. In the re-run of the presidential election ordered by the country's Supreme Court, Viktor Yanukovych lost the election to Viktor Yushchenko. The Party claimed to be a victim of a political persecution campaign organised by the new government, also because Borys Kolesnykov, the head of the regional party branch and of the Donetsk regional council, was arrested in April 2005 and charged with criminal extortion. The Party of Regions claimed this was an act of political repression, while the authorities believed that Kolesnykov had links to organised crime and his arrest was a purely criminal matter. The Council of Europe called the investigation "in full compliance with European standards". Kolesnykov has since been cleared of charges and released from pre-trial detention. The party signed a collaboration agreement in 2005 with Russia's "United Russia". American consultant Paul J. Manafort has advised the party and Yanukovych since 2005. 2006 Parliamentary Election results At the parliamentary elections on 26 March 2006, the party gained 32.14% of votes and 186 (out of 450) seats in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament), forming the largest parliamentary group. On 6 July 2006, the Socialist Party of Ukraine abandoned the "Orange Coalition" between Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc following the failure of each bloc to reach agreement on the formation of