Loved and Hated: Can Tymoshenko Still Lead Ukraine?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/yulia-tymoshenko-divides-ukraine-a-969645.html



Few figures in Ukraine are more divisive than Yulia Tymoshenko. Some see her as a martyr while others consider her to be part of the corrupt system. Now she wants to become president, but can she succeed?

Loved and Hated: Can Tymoshenko Still Lead Ukraine?
By Erich Follath and Matthias Schepp
May 16, 2014 – 06:38 PM

A meeting with Yulia Tymoshenko is like an appointment at the Vatican, an audience with the pope. It feels like there's incense in the air, an almost religious, idiosyncratic blend of politics and faith.

~snip~

Fifty-three-year-old Tymoshenko is an extremely divisive figure, more deeply loved and hated than almost any other politician in Ukraine. Some see her as the "Ukrainian Joan of Arc," a martyr who suffered for her nation in prison. Others, however, call her the "gas princess," an unscrupulous oligarch who has amassed a fortune worth billions and, as prime minister, did serious damage to Ukraine.

In 2005, Forbes named her the "world's third-most powerful woman." In 2011, she was sent to prison for alleged abuse of office. And in late 2013, a planned EU association agreement with Ukraine failed in part because Brussels had made Tymoshenko's immediate release one of its conditions.

~snip~

There are few women in politics known by an entire nation only by their first name: Evita in Argentina, Maggie in Great Britain and now Yulia. She shares Evita Péron's glamor and dramatic rise from the very bottom, and Margaret Thatcher's iron determination, cold-bloodedness and conviction that she is destined to play a great role in history. Ukrainians either worship or condemn Yulia Tymoshenko. No one is indifferent.