Tihipko was born on 13 February 1960 in the village of Drăgăneşti, Sîngerei, in the Lazovskiy district of the Moldovian SSR in Ukrainian family who moved there from Podolia in 1902 [REF].
Tihipko grew up in suburb of Chisinau and moved to Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR after finishing school when he was 17 [REF].