Discover

'Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko'^[1] () (born 27 November, 1960) is a Ukrainian politician and former Prime Minister of Ukraine (from 24 January to 8 September 2005). She is leader of the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Electoral Bloc.
Before becoming Ukraine's first female Prime Minister, Tymoshenko was one of the key leaders of the Orange Revolution. In this period, some Western media publications dubbed her "Joan of Arc of the Revolution".
On 28 July 2005, Forbes magazine named her, already a Prime Minister, third most powerful woman in the world, behind only Condoleezza Rice and Wu Yi.^[2]
Prior to her political career, Yulia Tymoshenko was a successful but controversial businesswoman in the gas industry and became wealthy. She is considered to be a possible candidate for President of Ukraine in 2010.

Contents

Non-political life

Business life

Ethnic origins

Present private life

Symbolic hairstyle and wardrobe

Political career

After the Orange Revolution

2006 parliamentary election

2007 Foreign Affairs article

Footnotes and references

External links

Non-political life

Tymoshenko is the daughter of Ludmila Nikolaevna Telegina and Vladimir Abramovich Grigyan (her father left the family when Yulia was three years old). She was born in Dnipropetrovsk. In 1979 she married Oleksandr Tymoshenko, son of a mid-level Soviet communist party bureaucrat and began rising through a number of positions under the Komsomol, the Soviet official Communist youth organization. She graduated from Dnipropetrovsk State University with a degree in economics in 1984, and went on to gain a candidate degree (the equivalent of a Ph.D.) in economics. She has since written around 50 papers. She was dubbed as one of the most beautiful women to ever enter politics by The Globe and Mail in 2001.

Business life

In 1989, as part of the ''perestroika'' initiatives, Yulia Tymoshenko founded and headed a Komsomol video rental chain (which grew to be quite successful), and later privatized it.
Tymoshenko experienced a rise in power under the Soviet system, but it was after the demise of the Soviet Union that she rose to particular prominence, directing several energy-related companies and acquiring a significant fortune between 1990 and 1998. During privatization in Ukraine, which mirrored that in Russia in terms of corruption and mismanagement, she became one of the wealthiest oligarchs in Ukraine, exporting metals. From 1995 to 1997, Tymoshenko was the president of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a privately owned middleman company which became the main importer of Russian natural gas to Ukraine in 1996. During that time she was nicknamed "gas princess" in the light of accusations that she has been reselling enormous quantities of stolen gas and avoiding taxation of those deals.
In the business period of her life, Tymoshenko involved business relations (either co-operative or hostile) with many important figures of Ukraine, first of all, in Dnipropetrovsk. The list includes Pavlo Lazarenko, Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Rinat Akhmetov, and, of course, Leonid Kuchma - the then-President originating from Dnipropetrovsk. As part of her gas-dealing business, Tymoshenko has also been closely linked to the management of the Russian Gazprom.

Ethnic origins

Yulia Tymoshenko's origins are the basis of some debate. Tymoshenko says she is half-Latvian on her father's side and half-Ukrainian, on her mother's side. Her father's last name, Grigyan, can be interpreted as being Armenian. It is sometimes claimed that her maiden name is Telegina (like her mother's actual name) and that she has Russian roots. In 2005, Yulia Tymoshenko was openly called Jewish by Yevhen Chervonenko (one of the leaders of Jewish community).^[3] She publicly denied that but assured that she was sympathetic to the problems of Jewish people.

Present private life

Yulia Tymoshenko is still married to Oleksandr Tymoshenko, although their marriage is sometimes perceived as a formal one. During the early years of her political career the two were parted for years when Mr. Tymoshenko was escaping arrest. The couple appear together very rarely. They have a daughter Yevhenia (born in 1980). Yevhenia graduated from a British university and now lives in Ukraine with her husband, rock-musician Sean Carr, who was born in Yorkshire, England, though he spent most of his childhood in Spain.^[4]

Symbolic hairstyle and wardrobe

Tymoshenko's plaited hairstyle became iconic at the time of the Orange Revolution, being subsequently dubbed a "Yuliya" by the London ''Times'' (20 May 2006).

Political career

Yulia Tymoshenko moved into politics in 1996, and was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (''Ukrainian parliament'') from the Kirovohrad Oblast, winning a record 92.3% of the vote in her constituency. She was re-elected in 1998 and 2002. In 1998, she became the Chair of the Budget Committee of Verkhovna Rada.
From 1999 to 2001, Tymoshenko was the Deputy Prime Minister for fuel and energy sector in the cabinet of Viktor Yushchenko. She was fired by President Leonid Kuchma in January 2001 after developing a conflict with the oligarchs in the industry.
In February 2001, Tymoshenko was arrested on charges of forging customs documents and smuggling of gas between 1995 and 1997 (while president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine) but was released several weeks later. Her political supporters organized several protest rallies near the Lukyanivska Prison where she was held in custody. According to Tymoshenko, the charges were fabricated by Kuchma's regime, under the influence of oligarchs threatened by her efforts to root out corruption and institute market-based reforms. In spite of being cleared of the charges, Moscow maintained an arrest warrant for Tymoshenko should she enter Russia until her dismissal as Prime Minister over 4 years later.

In addition, Tymoshenko's husband, Oleksandr, spent two years in hiding in order to avoid incarceration on charges the couple said were unfounded and politically motivated by the former Kuchma administration.
Once the charges were dropped, she became one of the leaders of street-level campaigns against President Kuchma for his alleged role in the murder of the journalist Georgi Gongadze. In this campaign, Tymoshenko first became known as a passionate revolutionary-like leader, an example of this being a TV broadcast of her smashing prison windows during one of the rallies.
The following year Tymoshenko was involved in a mysterious car accident that she survived with minor injuries—an episode some believe may have been a government assassination attempt.^[5] During this time, she founded Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (Блок Юлії Тимошенко), a political bloc that received 7.2 percent of the vote in the 2002 parliamentary election. She is the head of the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) political party.
Tymoshenko's critics have suggested that, as an oligarch, she gained her fortune improperly. Some have speculated that her familiarity with the illegal conduct of business common in Ukraine uniquely qualifies her to combat corruption—if she is willing to do so. Her former business partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, has been convicted in the United States on charges of billions-worth money laundering, corruption and fraud.
On 28 January 2005, following the Orange Revolution, Ukrainian prosecutors agreed, and closed the cases against then Prime Minister Tymoshenko and her family members due to lack of evidence. These cases included Tymoshenko's husband and her father-in-law, Henadiy Tymoshenko. Oleksandr Tymoshenko returned to Ukraine soon after that.
Despite this questionable past, her transition from oligarch to reformer was believed by many to be both genuine and effective. As energy Deputy Prime Minister, she virtually ended many corrupt arrangements in the energy sector. Under her stewardship, Ukraine's revenue collections from the electricity industry grew by several thousand per cent. 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.

After the Orange Revolution

On 24 January 2005 she was appointed as acting Prime Minister of Ukraine under Yushchenko's presidency. On 4 February 2005, at 2:54 p.m. (Kiev), Yulia Tymoshenko was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) by an overwhelming majority of 373 votes (226 were required for approval).
On 28 July 2005, Forbes magazine named her third most powerful woman in the world, behind only Condoleezza Rice and Wu Yi. However, in the magazine's new list published on 1 September 2006, Tymoshenko did not even make the top 100.
Several months into her government, numerous inner conflicts inside the post- Revolution coalition began to damage Ms. Tymoshenko's administration. On 8 September 2005, after the resignation of several senior officials including the Head of the Security and Defence Council Petro Poroshenko and Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko, Yulia Tymoshenko's government was dismissed by President Victor Yuschenko during a live TV address to the nation. She was succeeded by Yuriy Yehanurov. Later, the President criticized her work as head of the Cabinet, suggesting it had led to an economic slowdown and political conflicts within the ruling coalition.

2006 parliamentary election

After her dismissal Tymoshenko started to tour the country in a bid to win the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election as the leader of her Bloc. She soon announced that she wanted to return to the post of Prime Minister.
With the Bloc coming second in the election, and winning 129 seats, many speculated that she might form a coalition with Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party and the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) to prevent the Party of Regions from gaining power. Tymoshenko again reiterated her stance in regard to becoming Prime Minister. However, negotiations with Our Ukraine and SPU faced many difficulties as the various blocs scrapped over posts and engaged in counter-negotiations with other groupings.
On Wednesday June 21, 2006, the Ukrainian media reported that the parties had finally reached a coalition agreement, which appeared to have ended nearly three months of political uncertainty.^[6]
Tymoshenko's nomination and confirmation as new Prime Minister was expected to be straightforward. However, the nomination was preconditioned on an election of her long-term rival Petro Poroshenko from Our Ukraine as the speaker of the parliament. Within a few days after the coalition agreement had been signed, it became clear that the coalition members mistrusted each other, since they considered it to be a deviation from parliamentary procedures in order to hold a simultaneous vote on Poroshenko as the speaker and Tymoshenko as Prime Minister.
To aggravate matters, opposition members from the Party of Regions blocked the parliament from Thursday, June 29^[7] through Thursday, July 6.^[8] The Party of Regions announced an ultimatum to the coalition, demanding that the parliamentary procedures be observed, asking membership in parliamentary committees to be allocated in proportion to seats held by each fraction, chairmanship in certain Parliamentary committees as well as Governorships in the administrative subdivisions won by the Party of Regions. The coalition agreement deprived the Party of Regions and the communists of any representation in the executive and leadership in parliamentary committees [1] while in the local regional counsils won by the Party of Regions, the coalition parties were locked out of all committees as well.
Following a surprise nomination of Oleksandr Moroz from SPU as the Rada speaker and his subsequent election late on July 6 with the support of the Party of Regions, the "Orange coalition" collapsed. After the creation of a large coalition of majority, led by the former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych and composed of the Party of Regions, Socialists and Communists, Viktor Yanukovych became Prime Minister, and the other two parties were left in the wilderness. Whilst Tymoshenko immediately announced that her political force would form a shadow cabinet to the current government, Our Ukraine stalled until October 4 2006, when it too joined the opposition.^[9]

2007 Foreign Affairs article

Tymoshenko wrote an article called "Containing Russia" in the May-June 2007 edition of the journal ''Foreign Affairs''.^[10][11] In the article she sharply criticized alleged authoritarian developments under Vladimir Putin and opposed the alleged new Russian expansionism. Consequently, the article irked Russia and more than a week before the article was published, Russia responded to the article, calling it an "anti-Russian manifesto" and "an attempt to once again draw dividing lines in Europe."^[12]
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote an article called "Containing Russia: Back To The Future?" in the same journal and was apparently meant to be a response to Tymoshenko.^[13] He withdrew the article before publication, accusing the editors of changing his text and said his article was subjected to "censorship".

Footnotes and references

1. Tymoshenko's first name is variously transliterated as 'Yuliya', 'Yulia', 'Iulia', or 'Julia'.
2. http://www.forbes.com/home/lists/2005/07/27/powerful-women-world-cz_05powom_land.html
3. http://www.korrespondent.net/main/129586
4. http:www.kyivpost.com/guide/ww/26890
5. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1788924.stm
6. http://www.kyivpost.com/top/24674/
7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5127414.stm
8. http://www2.pravda.com.ua/en/news/2006/7/6/5674.htm
9. http://www.razom.org.ua/en/news/12058/
10. Y. TYMOSHENKO, "Containing Russia" in ''Foreign Affairs'', May-June 2007, pp. 69-83 [2]
11. I. KHRESTIN, "he Kremlin’s Issue with Foreign Affairs" in ''The Weekly Standard'', April 17, 2007, [3]
12. RUSSIAN EMBASSY TO SOUTH AFRICA, ''Russian MFA Information and Press Department Commentary Regarding a Question from RIA Novosti Concerning Yulia Tymoshenko’s Article ‘Containing Russia’ in the Journal Foreign Affairs'', April 17, 2007, [4]
13. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/07/76f94faf-fb05-4719-a104-97e2ddee97e5.html

External links

★ Tymoshenko's personal website (English language version)

★ Audio & Video about Yulia Tymoshenko avi, mp3

★ Daily updated Tymoshenko's Photo archive for 10 years

★ Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc website (Ukrainian and Russian)

★ Korrespondent.net profile

★ Time magazine profile

★ Yulia Tymoshenko's Project Syndicate op/eds

★ Ukraine PM makes Elle front cover (19 April 2005, BBC News)

★ BBC Audio & Video about Yulia Tymoshenko including a audio interview with Yulia Tymoshenko from 15 April 2005