Yulia Tymoshenko
Yulia Volodymyrivna TymoshenkoTemplate:Fn (Template:Lang-ua, nee Grygyan or Telegina, born 27 November 1960, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR) was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 24 January to 8 September 2005. She is a politician and leader of the Bat'kivshchyna (Батьківщина, Fatherland) party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. Prior to that she was a successful businesswoman in the gas industry and became one of the wealthiest people in Ukraine.
Before becoming Ukraine's first female prime minister, she was considered the most significant ally of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko (whose deputy she had been, when he was prime minister), and had a very high profile during the 2004 presidential election. She was also one of the key leaders of the Orange Revolution inspired by those elections, which eventually brought Yushchenko to power. In this period, some media publications dubbed her "Joan of Arc of the Orange Revolution". On 28 July 2005, Forbes magazine named her third most powerful woman in the world, behind only Condoleezza Rice and Wu Yi [1].
Origins
Tymoshenko's origins have been the basis of some debate. Tymoshenko says she is half-Latvian on her father's side and half-Ukrainian, on her mother's side. Her father's last name, Grigyan, can be also misinterpreted as being Armenian. It is sometimes claimed that her maiden name is Telegina and that she has Russian roots. She married Oleksandr Tymoshenko, a son of 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.
In 1989, she founded a video rental chain which grew to be quite successful. 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. During privatisation in Ukraine, which mirrored that in Russia in terms of corruption and mismanagement, Tymoshenko's husband became one of the wealthiest oligarchs in Ukraine, exporting metals. 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. During that time she was nicknamed "gas princess" in the light of accusations she had sold abroad enormous quantities of stolen Russian gas.
Political career
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 and institute market-based reforms. Once the charges were dropped, she led a street-level campaign against President Kuchma for his alleged role in the murder of the journalist Georgi Gongadze. The following year she was involved in a mysterious car accident that almost killed her—an episode some believe may have been a government assassination attempt.
Tymoshenko's critics have suggested that, as a so-called oligarch, her fortune was gained improperly. Some have speculated that her familiarity with the illegal conduct of business common in Ukraine uniquely qualifies her to combat corruption—if she is willing to do so. Her former business partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, has been convicted and imprisoned in the United States on charges of money laundering, corruption and fraud. He is also fighting extradition to Ukraine on charges of abusing his office for personal gain and is believed to have sent billions of dollars outside of the country.
In addition, Tymoshenko's husband, Oleksandr, remains a fugitive from justice after jumping bail. Although Interpol refuses to take him from their list, the couple insists that the charges he faces are unfounded and politically motivated by the former Kuchma administration. Ukrainian prosecutors said on 28 January 2005 that they had closed the case against then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her family members due to lack of evidence. Prosecutors also ended their case involving Tymoshenko's husband, Oleksandr, and her father-in-law, Henadiy Tymoshenko, who were charged with fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion. Oleksandr Tymoshenko returned to Ukraine soon after that.
Despite this questionable past, her transition from oligarch to reformer was believed by many to be both genuine and effective. As energy Vice Prime Minister, she virtually ended many corrupt arrangements in the energy sector. Under her stewardship, Ukraine's revenue collections from the electricity industry grew by several thousand per cent. She scrapped the practice of barter in the electricity market, requiring customers to pay for their electricity in cash. She also terminated exemptions for many organizations which excluded them from having their power disconnected. Her reforms meant that the government had sufficient funds to pay civil servants and increase salaries.
However, several months into her government, allegations of corruption and failure to deliver on the promise of reform after the Orange Revolution began to damage Ms Tymoshenko's administration. On 8 September 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 Victor Yuschenko. She was succeeded by Yuriy Yehanurov, governor of Dnipropetrovsk province.
Opposition leadership
She was briefly arrested in the Russian Federation in February 2001, but was subsequently released. She is still wanted by the Russian government on various financial crime charges, although her defenders say the Russian government is politically motivated to arrest her. Until the Orange Revolution, she was wanted by the Interpol, but was removed from the list for unknown reasons.
After her release by the Russian police, Tymoshenko became one of most outspoken leaders of the Ukrainian opposition, seeing as the Kuchma government was pro-Russian, as opposed to pro-Western. In particular, she attacked 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 (Блок Юлії Тимошенко), a political party that received 7.2 per cent of the vote in the 2002 parliamentary election.
Prime Minister
On 24 January 2005 she was appointed as acting Prime Minister of Ukraine under Yushchenko's presidency. After prolonged negotiations on the composition of the Cabinet, Yulia Tymoshenko was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) on 4 February 2005, at 2:54pm (Kyiv time), by an overwhelming majority of 373 votes (226 were required for approval). Within minutes, Prime Minister Tymoshenko named her Cabinet while President Yushchenko was signing appointment edicts in the parliamentary chamber.
She remained Prime Minister until 8 September 2005, when her government was dismissed by President Yuschenko after a series of high-level resignations and allegations of corruption.
Footnote
Template:Fnb Tymoshenko's first name is often transliterated as Yuliya.
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