Yulia Tymoshenko

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Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko Юлія Володимирівна Тимошенко
17th Prime Minister of Ukraine
In office January 24, 2005 – September 8, 2005
Preceded by	Mykola Azarov
Succeeded by	Yuriy Yekhanurov
Born	November 27, 1960 (age 46) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine
Political party	All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland
Spouse	Oleksandr Tymoshenko

Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko¹ (Ukrainian: Юлія Володимирівна Тимошенко) (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. Prior to that she was a successful businesswoman in the gas industry and became one of the wealthiest people in Ukraine. She is married to Oleksandr Tymoshenko. They have a daughter, Yevhenia (born in 1980).

Before becoming Ukraine's first female prime minister, she was considered the most significant ally of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko (she had been his deputy when he was prime minister), and had a very high profile during the 2004 presidential election. She was also one of the key leaders of the Orange Revolution inspired by those elections, which eventually brought Yushchenko to power. In this period, some Western media publications dubbed her "Joan of Arc of the Orange Revolution". On 28 July 2005, Forbes magazine named her third most powerful woman in the world, behind only Condoleezza Rice and Wu Yi [1]. However, in the magazine's new list published on 1 September 2006, Tymoshenko did not even make the top 100.

"She was dismissed by President Viktor Yushchenko last September, after only eight months on the job since leading the country’s Orange Revolution. Her coalition was unable to overcome opposition from former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych," Forbes Magazine said. [2]

Contents 1 Parents 2 Early life 3 Political career 3.1 After the Orange revolution 3.2 2006 parliamentary election 4 Footnote 5 External links

[edit] Parents

Mother - Ludmila Nikolaevna Telegina.

Father - Vladimir Abramovich Grigyan (left the family when Yulia was three years old).

[edit] Early life

Yulia Tymoshenko was born in Dnipropetrovsk. In 1979 she married Oleksandr Tymoshenko, a son of a mid-level Soviet communist party bureaucrat and began rising through a number of positions under the Komsomol - Soviet official Communist youth organization. She graduated from Dnipropetrovs'k 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. In 1989, as part of the perestroika initiatives, she 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 privatisation 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 in 1996. During that time she was nicknamed "gas princess" in the light of accusations she has been reselling enormous quantities of stolen Russian 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 Russian Gazprom.

Her origins have been 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 also misinterpreted 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, she was openly called Jewish by Yevhen Chervonenko (her former minister, one of the leaders of Jewish community) [3]. She publicly denied that but assured that she was sympathetic to the problems of Jewish people.

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

[edit] Political career

Yulia Tymoshenko moved into politics in 1996, and was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (the 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 [4]. 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.

[edit] 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. (Kyiv time), Yulia Tymoshenko was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) by an overwhelming majority of 373 votes (226 were required for approval).

However, several months into her government, a failure to deliver on the promise of reform after the Orange Revolution 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.

[edit] 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 bloc's scrapped over posts and engaged in counter-negotiations with other groupings.

On Wednesday June 21, 2006, the Ukrainian media reported that the parties finally reached a coalition agreement, which appeared to have ended nearly three months of political uncertainty.[5]

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 [6] through Thursday, July 6.[7]. 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[8] 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].

[edit] Footnote

Note 1: Tymoshenko's first name is variously transliterated as Yuliya, Yulia, Iulia, or Julia. In any case, its English language counterpart is Julia.

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Yulia Tymoshenko

• 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

Preceded by Mykola Azarov

Prime Minister of Ukraine 2005

Succeeded by Yuriy Yekhanurov

Preceded by None

Leader of Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc 2002-present

Succeeded by Incumbent