Ukraine Tymoshenko finally freed! Let the Orange revolution begin again and democracy reign in the
Ukraine.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26306511
Apologies for mispelling typing on mobile tab sometimes mistakes made.
= new reply since forum marked as read
country.
That's her in 2000 before she hired a PR firm to make her over to enter politics. Gotta evoke that Ukranian nationalism.
Mrs Tymoshenko's speech on Saturday night, delivered from a wheelchair thanks to ill-health, received warm - but not rapturous - applause. The first anti-Tymoshenko banners have appeared among the crowds.
"I'm against her coming back to power," said Iryna Gorbatuk, a 25-year-old protester. "We want her to be healthy - she can go and receive treatment somewhere - but we don't want her back in office. She was part of the government and she had a lot of chances to change the system and she failed."
Mrs Tymoshenko is sullied not only by her time as prime minister, but her immense personal wealth and a notorious gas deal she signed in 2009, which was seen as favouring Russia.
Katerina Kononiuk, a 25-year-old protester, said this transaction had proved Mrs Tymoshenko to be a "traitor to Ukraine".
Although they deposed a stubborn president after a bloody three-month struggle, the crowds in the Maidan do not feel victorious. They believe that Mr Yanukovych's downfall was only a first step towards achieving their vision of a new Ukraine. They fear that established politicians like Mrs Tymoshenko are poised to steal their victory away from them.
"We got rid of the head of the iceberg, but everyone who is in politics today was part of this corrupted system, of this bandit system," added Miss Kononiuk. "They know how to survive in it and how to get rich from it. We need new people to come to power."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10657013/Yulia-Tymoshenko-bides-her-time-as-acting-Ukraine-leader-is-chosen.html
I have written more than once that it is highly doubtful that Yanukovych has a pro-Russia bias – if for no other reason than the political party he heads, the Party of the Regions, is run by the owners of major Ukrainian coal, metallurgical, mining and chemical companies that have more ties with Europe and Asia than they do with Russia.
At the same time, however, these enterprises cannot exist without Russian gas.
The original price for that gas, which prime ministers Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko agreed to in January 2009, was exorbitantly high for them.
Tymoshenko was never able to explain clearly why Russian gas paradoxically cost Ukraine about $50 more per 1,000 cubic metres than, for example, Germany, which is much farther from Russia's borders.
Now that Tymoshenko is part of the opposition, she accuses Yanukovych of putting the business interests of Ukraine's oligarchs above the country's national interests.
But there is another side to the story, about which the opposition remains silent. The enterprises owned by those oligarchs employ millions of people who will be deprived of a means of survival should those firms halt production or go bankrupt.
What's more, some of those plants are the sole source of income for entire towns. If they fail, those company towns will die with them.
The Ukrainian economy is teetering on the verge of collapse. The country is suffering from a serious decline in production and a sharp drop in tax revenues. It has a huge budget deficit, enormous public debt, an empty treasury and a high poverty rate. The gas-for-fleet agreement that enables the Ukrainian government to save up to $4bn per year is like a new lease of life for Ukraine's dying economy.
Without that cut in gas prices, Ukraine could not have shown an acceptable national budget plan to the International Monetary Fund and resumed co-operation with that organisation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/rbth/opinion/7803112/Behind-the-Russia-Ukraine-deal-on-gas.html
Drew is talking about someone named "Tyshenko". Must be a different person because h'es been following the situation for 8 years. 