Early Life
Klitschko was born in Semipalatinsk (now Semey, Kazakhstan). Though a celebrity in his former adopted home of Germany, he moved with his older brother Vitali to Beverly Hills, California, USA, in 2004. Their father, Vladimir Rodionovich Klitschko (1947–2011), was a Soviet Air Force major general and a military attaché of Ukraine in Germany. He was also one of the commanders in charge of cleaning up the effects of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and was afterward diagnosed with cancer. Their mother is Nadezhda Ulyanovna.
In the summer of 1996, Klitschko finished Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky Pedagogical Institute (Ukraine) and was accepted in the postgraduate study program of Kiev University. On 18 January 2001, in a conference hall of Kyiv University of physical science and sports, Klitschko presented his doctoral dissertation and was awarded a PhD in Sports Science. Klitschko speaks four languages: Ukrainian, Russian, German and English. At the beginning of his professional career, he began using the German transliteration of his name, Wladimir.
Read more about this topic: Wladimir Klitschko
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