Party of Labor (Valentyn Landyk), Party of Solidarity of Ukraine (Petro Poroshenko), and Party of Regional Revival of Ukraine (Volodymyr Rybak), into a new one under the name of Party of Regional Revival "Labor Solidarity of Ukraine". The co-leaders of the new political polity became Valentyn Landyk, Petro Poroshenko, and Volodymyr Rybak. Also, prior to the merger the Party of Solidarity of Ukraine was completely abandoned by its base party of Serhiy Dovhan, the Peasant Party of Ukraine, which dissolved its union with Solidarity. On February 21, 2001, the Ministry of Justice registered the newly established Party of Regional Revival "Labour Solidarity of Ukraine". On March 3, 2001, at the 3rd Party Congress, the party changed its name to Party of Regions. At the congress Mykola Azarov, who at that time was chairman of the State Tax Administration of Ukraine, was elected the party leader, but soon resigned in December 2001, being replaced by his deputy and at that time Vice Prime Minister Volodymyr Semynozhenko. In an interview with the newspaper Den () on 6 March 2001, Azarov said that he agreed to become the chairman for a brief period "until the party nominated a leader who will claim the office of the President of Ukraine in 2004". In December 2001 the Party of Regions member Ihor Yushchko was appointed Minister of Finance of Ukraine. On 21 March 2001, the Ministry of Justice re-registered the party under the number 939 with the older date of registration. On 23 May 2001, the party signed an agreement of partnership and cooperation with the party Labour Ukraine (Serhiy Tihipko), and on 7 June 2001, with the Agrarian Party of Ukraine. Regions of Ukraine was the parliamentary wing of the Party of Regions; it was created at the end of March 2001 after several deputies defected from their original faction. Critics claimed the deputies were "lured away" from those other factions by pressure and analysts claimed most of them had nothing to do with the new party. Nine out of seventeen members of the faction had their political and business roots in the Donetsk region. In July 2002 the party had a faction of 24 people (one deputy left the faction later). On 20 March 2001, Solidarity announced it would "be as a single bloc". (Eventually the (Solidarity) party became part of the Viktor Yushchenko Bloc Our Ukraine during the 2002 parliamentary elections.) During