The rehabilitation of Ukraine’s Yulia Tymoshenko

After her imprisonment Yuli Tymoshenko, former prime minister of Ukraine, is working to rehabilitate her political image.

As far as her political enemies were concerned her political career was finished. Although a woman she was a political fighter with ideas of her own on what was good for her country. Right or wrong, the issue became whether she could rehabilitate the image made of her by her enemies. This column is a compilation of many articles on both her person and her politics through the years that led to her imprisonment. It is a story of a woman who went into politics generally preserved for men.

“Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko was born on Nov. 27, 1960.

She began her career in politics in Ukraine when she co-led the Orange Revolution. She was the first woman appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine and served from 24 Jan. 24 to Sept. 8, 2005, and again from Dec. 18, 2007 to March 4, 2010

Tymoshenko is the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” political party that has 19 seats in parliament.She is its parliamentary faction leader when her party won 101 of seats in the parliamentary election of 2012.

After the 2010 presidential election, a number of criminal cases were brought against her. On Oct. 11, 2011 she was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of power, and sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay the state $188 million. The prosecution and conviction were viewed by many governments – most prominently the European Union, who repeatedly called for the release of Tymoshenko as the primary condition for signing the EU Association Agreement, the US, and international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

She was released on Feb. 22, 2014, in the concluding days of the Euromaidan revolution, following a revision of the Ukrainian criminal code that effectively decriminalized the actions for which she was imprisoned.

The decision was supported by 322 votes. She was officially rehabilitated on Feb. 28, 2014  after the Euromaidan revolution, the Ukrainian Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights closed the case and found that “no crime was committed.”

Before becoming Ukraine’s first female Prime Minister in 2005. Tymoshenko co-led the Orange Revolution. She was placed third in Forbes magazine’s List of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women 2005.

Under her guidance, Ukraine’s revenue collections from the electricity industry grew by several thousand percent. She scrapped the practice of barter in the electricity market, requiring industrial customers to pay for their electricity in cash. She also terminated exemptions for many organizations  which excluded them from having their power disconnected. Her reforms meant that the government had sufficient funds to pay civil servants and increase salaries.

In 2000, Tymoshenko’s government provided an additional 18 billion Hryvna for social payments. Half of this amount was collected due to withdrawal of funds from shadow schemes, the ban on barter payments and the introduction of competition rules to the energy market.

Tymoshenko’s speeches on the Maidan kept the momentum of the street protests going.

Tymoshenko urged “national democratic forces” to unite around the candidate who garnered the largest number of votes after the first round of the presidential elections. “If we are not able to strengthen our efforts and unite the whole national-patriotic and democratic camp of Ukraine... we will be much weaker than those who want revenge.”

On June 24, 2014 the Supreme Court of Ukraine rehabilitated Tymoshenko. The European court of human rights announced the termination of consideration of the case of Yulia Tymoshenko V. Ukraine in connection with the admission of the Ukrainian Government of political persecution and human rights violations on Jan. 22 2015.

Tymoshenko travelled to Kyiv after her release where she attended a makeshift memorial to the first slain protesters on Hrushevskogo Street and gave a speech on Maidan stage.

In the following days she had a number of meetings and phone conversations with USA, EU, and OSCE officials.

From March 6 to 7 Tymoshenko attended a political conference of the European People’s Party in Dublin, where she openly discussed events with Angela Merkel, Jose Manuel Barroso, Viviane Reding, Michel Barnier, Mariano Rajoy and Donald Tusk, amongst other notable figures. On  March 7, 2014, she was admitted to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany, for treatment of her severe back problems.

Yulia is married to businessman Oleksandr Tymoshenko. They have one daughter – Yevhenia (Eugenia) Tymoshenko who was born Feb. 20, 1980.  She is a graduate of the London School of Economics (Bsc “Government,” Msc “Russian and Post-Soviet Studies”).

Tymoshenko and her husband rent a house in Kiev and own an apartment in Dnipropetrovsk. Houses in Dnipropetrovsk belong to their relatives.

Tymoshenko has been criticized for her luxurious living but she declared she never used and will never use or move into a state-owned summer house, in contrast with all former Presidents and many high-ranking officials of Ukraine, who are living in state-owned dachas in Koncha-Zaspa. According to Ukrainian media Tymoshenko lives in an estate in Koncha-Zaspa, “rented from a friend.”

Tymoshenko wants to raise the general level of social standards by equalizing salaries in the industrial and social spheres, and pledged in November 2009 to revamp Ukraine’s hospitals and health system within two years. She also pledged tax breaks for farmers. Other economic policies included compensation for depositors who lost Soviet-era savings, price controls on food and medicines to bring inflation down, and calls for a review of murky privatizations and high social spending.

Tymoshenko wants to cut the number of taxes by a third to simplify the system, and wants to cut the Value Added Tax (VAT) and offer tax breaks to importers of new technologies to poor regions to boost investment there.

In December 2009 the second Tymoshenko Government proposed creating independent anti-corruption bureaus with representatives of regional governments. Tymoshenko expanded a Law that aimed to empower local authorities. In the summer of 2009, she claimed she tried to bring together different political parties in order to amend the constitution and switch to a parliamentary form of government. Tymoshenko stated it was “Viktor Yanukovych’s naked attempt to hijack the election that precipitated the Orange Revolution and should have resulted in him being banned from running in future elections.”

Tymoshenko without her trademark hair braids is a voluble public performer. Her fiery rhetoric made her an icon of the Orange Revolution. She engaged the services of Doughty Chambers of London where Amal Clooney works.