Yulia Tymoshenko

Prime Minister of Ukraine
Incumbent
Assumed office 18 December 2007
President Viktor Yushchenko

Preceded by Viktor Yanukovych

In office24 January 2005 – 8 September 2005
Acting until 4 February 2005
President Viktor Yushchenko

Preceded by Mykola Azarov

Succeeded by Yuriy Yekhanurov

Born 27 November 1960 (age 48)
Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union (now Ukraine)

Political party Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc

Other political All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland”
affiliations

Spouse(s) Oleksandr Tymoshenko

Children Eugenia Tymoshenko

Alma mater Dnipropetrovsk State University

Religion Ukrainian Orthodox

Website http://www.tymoshenko.ua/en/

Yulia[1] Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko Julia Volodymyrivna Tymošenko Nee Grigean, born on November 27, 1960 is a Ukrainian politician and current Prime Minister of Ukraine. She is the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.
Before becoming Ukraine’s first female Prime Minister, Tymoshenko was one of the key leaders of the Orange Revolution.
Prior to her political career, Yulia Tymoshenko was a successful but controversial businesswoman in the gas industry, which made her wealthy. Tymoshenko was Prime Minister in 2005 between January 24 and September 8, and was elected again as PM on December 18, 2007.
Tymoshenko is a candidate in the presidential elections in 2010[2]

Early life and career

Tymoshenko was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine) as the daughter of Ludmila Nikolaevna Telegina and Vladimir Abramovich Grigean (her father left the family when Yulia was three years old)[3][4]. Tymoshenko took the surname of her mother, under which she graduated.[4] In 1979, Tymoshenko married Oleksandr Tymoshenko, son of a mid-level Soviet communist party bureaucrat. Tymoshenko graduated from the 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. Since then, she has written about 50 papers. Tymoshenko is also a former student of the National Mining University of Ukraine, but did not graduate there[5].
After graduating with honors from the Economic Department of Dnipropetrovsk State University in 1984 Tymoshenko worked as an engineer-economist in a machine-building plant in Dnipropetrovsk till 1988[6].
In 1989, as part of the perestroika initiatives, Yulia Tymoshenko founded and headed a Komsomol video rental chain[3] (which grew to be quite successful), and later privatized it.
Tymoshenko worked as a General Director of Ukrainian Petrol Corporation, a company that provided the agriculture industry of Dnipropetrovsk with oil products from 1991 to 1995[6].
From 1995 to 1997, Tymoshenko was the president of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a privately owned middleman company that became the main importer of Russian natural gas to Ukraine in 1996. During that time she was nicknamed “gas princess” in light of accusations that she had been reselling enormous quantities of stolen gas and avoiding taxation of those deals. She was also accused of “having given Pavlo Lazarenko kickbacks in exchange for her company’s stranglehold on the country’s gas supplies”.[7] During this period Tymoshenko was involved in business relations (either co-operative or hostile) with many important figures of Ukraine. The list includes Pavlo Lazarenko, Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Rinat Akhmetov, and Leonid Kuchma who at that time was the President of Ukraine. All of them, but Akhmetov, were originating from Dnipropetrovsk. Tymoshenko has also been closely linked to the management of the Russian Gazprom.
Tymoshenko is said to have acquired a significant fortune between 1990 and 1998. During this period of privatization in Ukraine, according to historians a period full of corruption and mismanagement, she became one of the wealthiest[7] oligarchs in Ukraine.

Political career

Early 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. In Parliament she then joins the faction Constitutional Centre.[8]
She was re-elected in 1998 on the party list (as number 6[8]) of Hromada (Tymoshenko was a leading figure in that party)[9] and became the Chair of the Budget Committee of the Verkhovna Rada[6][10]. After Hromada’s party leader Pavlo Lazarenko fled to the United States in the spring of 1999 to avoid investigations for embezzlement[11] various faction members left Hromada to join other parliamentry faction,[12] among them Tymoshenko who set up the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” faction.[11]
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. Soon after her dismissal Tymoshenko led the loose organization National Salvation Committee and became active in the Ukraine without Kuchma-protests.[13]
In mid-February 2001[13] Tymoshenko was arrested[6] on charges of forging customs documents and smuggling of gas between 1995 and 1997 (while president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine)[14] 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.

Campaigns against Kuchma and 2002 election

Once the charges were dropped, she became one of the leaders of street-level of campaigns against President Kuchma for his alleged role in the murder of the journalist Georgiy R. Gongadze again. 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. At the time Tymoshenko wanted to organise a national referendum to impeach President Kuchma.[15]
Our government was doing almost an underground work under the rigorous pressure of president Kuchma and criminal-oligarchic groups. All anti-shadow and anti-corruption initiatives of the Cabinet of Ministers were being blocked, while the Government was being an object of blackmailing and different provocations. People were arrested only because their relatives were working for the Cabinet of Ministers and were carrying out real reforms that were murderous for the corrupted system of power.
—Yulia Tymoshenko Nezavisimaya Gazeta interview (October 25, 2001)[16]

February 9, 2001, Tymoshenko founded the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (the National Salvation Committee merged into it[13]), 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 since the party was organised in 1999[17].
August 11, 2001 civilian and military prosecutors in Russia opened a new criminal case against Tymoshenko accusing her of bribery.[18] On December 27, 2005 Russian prosecutors dropped these charges. Russian prosecutors had suspended an arrest warrant when she was appointed Prime Minister in but reinstated it after she was fired in September 2005. The prosecutors suspended it again when she came to Moscow for questioning[19] on September 25, 2005.[20] Tymoshenko never traveled to Russia during her first seven months as Prime Minister (the first Tymoshenko Government).[20]
In January 2002 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.[21]

Orange Revolution

In the Autumn of 2001 both Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko broached at creating a broad opposition bloc against the incumbent President Leonid Kuchma in order to win the Ukrainian presidential election 2004.[11]
Late 2002 Tymoshenko, Oleksandr Moroz (Socialist Party of Ukraine), Petro Symonenko (Communist Party of Ukraine) and Viktor Yushchenko (Our Ukraine) issued a joint statement concerning “the beginning of a state revolution in Ukraine”. The communist stept out of the alliance, Symonenko was against a single candidate from the alliance in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, but the other three party’s remained allies[22] (until July 2006)[23].
On July 2, 2004 Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc established the Force of the people, a coalition which aimed to stop “the destructive process that has, as a result of the incumbent authorities, become a characteristic for Ukraine”, the pact included a promise by Viktor Yushchenko to nominate Tymoshenko as Prime Minister if Yushchenko would win the October 2004 presidential election. Tymoshenko campaigned for Yushchenko during the 2004 electoral campaign.[11] The Yushchenko campaign publicly called for protest on November 21, 2004 (second round election day) when allegations of fraud began to spread. On November 22, 2004 massive protests broke out in cities across Ukraine: the largest, in Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti attracted an estimated 500,000 participants[24]. These protest become known as the Orange Revolution. During the protests Tymoshenko speeches on Maidan kept the momentum of the street protests going.[25] After the cancellation of Viktor Yanukovych’s official victory and a re-run of the second round of the election Viktor Yushchenko was elected President.[26]

After the Orange Revolution

On January 24, 2005 she was appointed as acting Prime Minister of Ukraine under Yushchenko’s presidency. On February 4, 2005, at 2:54 p.m. (Eastern European Time), Yulia Tymoshenko was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) by an overwhelming majority of 373 votes (226 were required for approval).[3][27] On July 28, 2005, Forbes magazine named her third most powerful woman in the world, behind only Condoleezza Rice and Wu Yi.[28] However, in the magazine’s list published on September 1, 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 Tymoshenko’s administration. 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.