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Tymoshenko To Go On Trial For Abuse Of Power

Yulia Tymoshenko greets her supporters during a rally in front of Kyiv district court on June 24.

U.S., EU Condemn Tymoshenko Trial

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June 26, 2011

A judge has ruled that the case concerning former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is to be heard on June 29.

She is charged with abuse of power and could face up to seven years in jail if found guilty.

Judge Rodion Kyriyev made the decision on June 25, the second day of pre-trial hearings related to the high-profile case, which drew protests in Kyiv last week.

Tymoshenko is accused of secretly arranging a 2009 deal between Russia's Gazprom and the state energy firm Naftogaz in order to end a dispute over gas prices.

She denies the charges as politically motivated.

Tymoshenko twice served as Ukraine's prime minister.

She is now an opposition party leader after losing a tight presidential campaign to her bitter rival, President Viktor Yanukovych.

compiled from agency reports

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by: Natella from: USA

June 26, 2011 05:26

Keep your best hopes up - Tymoshenko is a strong and bright symbol of people's hope against the profound and ruthless highest-level corruption in Ukraine...

by: Karon Thompson from: USA

June 26, 2011 09:52

This trial is a charade. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is not a heroin. She is a puppet who served too many masters--first exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky and then Mr. Berezovsky's nemesis Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

She will be found guilty of these charges. She cannot win it because the evidence is stacked against her in rooms dedicated to her at the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation dating back to 1996-1997 when she served as the president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine.

The evidence is also stacked against her in file cabinets dedicated to her with the Military Procuratura in Russia. Russia's Ministry of Defense is seeking $200 million USD) in debt owed by the Ukraine that is linked to this second round of charges against her. The Ukraine has refused to pay that outstanding debt.

Until Ms. Tymoshenko was elected PM, Russia had a standing order for her arrest. That she made a Faustian bargain with the powers that be in Russia is incontestable. Ms. Tymoshenko compromised the good citizens of the Ukraine she was sworn to serve when she negotiated the gas contracts with then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. .

The charges against her relate to her involvement with former PM Pavlo Lazarenko, who is serving a 97 month sentence in a U.S. Federal Correctional Facility in Dublin, California. He was convicted of money-laundering, wire fraud and extortion on 25 August 2006 and is due to be released on 11 August 2011.

A little unknown fact is that if UK-based exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky had not dispatched Major Yuri Shvets, a former KGB officer residing in the U.S. under a grant of political asylum and an aide to Mr. Berezovsky who was aid $500,000 to fine tune and edit the propaganda for Ms. Tymoshenko's campaign, to meet with former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko to offer him olive branch to contain him against implicating Ms. Tymoshenko, an extradition request for Ms. Tymoshenko would have been issued against her.
The crimes for which Mr. Lazarenko was convicted are explicitly linked to Ms. Tymoshenko when she as president United Energy Systems of Ukraine. They are now linked to the second set of charges on the 2009 gas concessions she entered during her negotiation with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Contrary to her accusation that Judge Rodion Kireyev is a puppet of President Viktor Yanukovych, Ms. Tymoshenko, herself, was first a puppet to Mr. Berezovsky, then a puppet of Mr. Putin. She needs to be reminded of the lyrics in America's folk music legend Bobby Dylan's old song "Everybody's got to serve somebody" and ask herself in whose interests she was serving when she engaged in the crimes she for which she has in this writer's opinion been indicted.

by: Ben

June 26, 2011 17:10

Karon! So well informed about Timoshenko and Berezovsky means some relations with Russian "Military Procuratura" and may by with the other Russian organization?