Yulia Tymoshenko, born November 27, 1960, in Dnipropetrovs'k, Ukrainian SSR, became the 13th and now the 16th Prime Minister of Ukraine. She is a career politician and leader of the Bat'kivshchyna (Motherland) party and the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc.
She is widely considered as the most significant ally of Viktor Yushchenko (whose deputy she was as prime minister), especially throughout the 2004 presidential election. She was also one of the key leaders of the Orange Revolution inspired by those elections. In this period, some media publications dubbed her the "Joan of Arc of the Orange Revolution". Tymoshenko is considered to be among the wealthiest people of Ukraine.
Tymoshenko's origins have been the basis of some debate. Some have claimed that her maiden name is Grigyan, and that she is half-Armenian on her father's side. However, her supporters insist that it is instead Telegina. Her critics claim that this is an attempt to prevent accusations of being involved in foreign interventionism.
She married Alexander Tymoshenko, a mid-level Soviet communist party bureaucrat, in 1979, and began rising through a number of positions under the Soviet system. 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 authored about 50 papers.
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. From 1995 to 1997, Tymoshenko was the president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a privately owned company which became the main importer of Russian natural gas in 1996.
However, Tymoshenko's critics have suggested that some of her fortune was gained through money laundering and other illegal dealings. She was briefly arrested in the Russian Federation in February 2001, but was subsequently released. It has been claimed that she is still wanted by the Russian government on various financial crime charges.
Tymoshenko made a move into politics in 1996, and was elected as a representative of Kirovohrad oblast, winning a record 92.3% of the vote in her district. She was re-elected in 1998 and 2002. In 1998, she became the Chair of the Budget Committee of the Ukrainian parliament. From 1999 to 2001, Tymoshenko was the deputy prime minister for fuel in the energy sector in the government of Viktor Yushchenko.
Tymoshenko was fired by President Leonid Kuchma in January 2001, on charges of forging customs documents and smuggling Russian natural gas while she was the president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine between 1995 and 1997. She was arrested in February 2001 but was released and cleared of charges several weeks later. According to Tymoshenko, the accusations were fabricated by Kuchma's regime, under the influence of coal industry oligarchs threatened by her efforts to root out corruption.
After her release, Tymoshenko became one of most outspoken leaders of the Ukrainian opposition, attacking Kuchma over corruption and the death of Georgiy Gongadze, an opposition journalist who was kidnapped and killed in late 2000. She then founded the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, a political party that received 7.2% of the vote in the 2002 parliamentary election.
On January 24, 2005 she was officially appointed as acting Prime Minister of Ukraine under Yushchenko's presidency. On February 4, 2005, after long negotiations on the composition of the Cabinet she was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament).
On September 8, 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 Viktor Yushchenko 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.
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.
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 through Thursday, July 6.
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 while in the local regional councils 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 the Socialist Party of Ukraine 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.
Tymoshenko wrote an article called "Containing Russia" in the May-June 2007 edition of the journal Foreign Affairs. 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."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote an article called "Containing Russia: Back To The Future?" in the same journal which was apparently meant to be a response to Tymoshenko. He withdrew the article before publication, accusing the editors of changing his text and said his article was subjected to "censorship".
Following balloting in the 2007 parliamentary elections held on September 30, 2007, Orange Revolution parties said they had won enough votes to form a governing coalition. As of October 3, 2007, an almost final tally gave the alliance of Tymoshenko and President Yushchenko a slim lead over a rival party of Prime Minister Yanukovych. Although Yanukovych, whose party won the single biggest share of the vote, also claimed victory, one of his coalition allies, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, failed to gain enough votes to retain seats in Parliament.
On October 15, 2007, Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc agreed to form a majority coalition in the new parliament of the 6th convocation. On November 29, a coalition was signed between the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc, which is associated with President Yushchenko. Both parties are affiliated with the Orange Revolution. On Tuesday, December 18 she became prime minister for the second time.
