In the closing days of 2016, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko vowed to be a political force to reckon with in 2017. The member of parliament and head of the 19-member Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) Party faction held a YouTube conference on Dec. 23.
While she answered some questions, even from critics, the event was mainly her monologue on the issues of today.
So far, performances like these have been enough – along with dissatisfaction with President Petro Poroshenko – to keep the 57-year-old polling as one of the most popular politicians. Her staying power – through scandals over how she became wealthy, two terms as prime minister and a politically motivated jailing by ex-President Viktor Yanukovych – ranks her as one of the most durable politicians in independent Ukraine’s 26-year history.
A recorded version of a Dec. 23 YouTube conference held by member of parliament and head of the 19-member Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) Party faction Yulia Tymoshenko.
Here are the highlights:
Cooperation with Russia
Tymoshenko scoffed at opponents attempts to paint her as Kremlin-friendly. She said the critics have no case to make, other than the fact she has been shown on TV as laughing at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s jokes during their joint press conference back in 2008, when she served as Ukraine’s prime minister.
“When my opponents try to prove my cooperation with the Kremlin, the only thing they can find on me – that I was giggling at the press conference. I think that this is a not bad result,” she said.
Then she landed a swipe at Poroshenko, who has a large Roshen confectionary in the Russian city of Lipetsk, 450 kilometers southwest of Moscow, even though the Kremlin has waged war against Ukraine for three years, killing 10,000 people.
“But imagine if I had Roshen factories in Lipetsk, if I had a huge business empire in Russia, if I ship Roshen products to (Kremlin-) occupied territories (of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts) and pay (taxes) to the Russian budget. What would they do with me then? I would be crucified on Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square.”
Tymoshenko thinks that many Ukrainians are brainwashed by the televisions channels owned by the country’s top officials. This is one of the tools to support existing ruling system, she said. Tymoshenko owns no TV stations.
Controversial gas agreement
Her 2009 gas agreement, ending another of Russia’s shutoffs of natural gas in the dead of winter, continues to haunt her today.
“They have been fighting me on this issue for last 7-8 years,” she said. She said critics have inflated the price she negotiated “because they want to erase me from your minds and hearts.”
On Jan. 18, 2009, Tymoshenko and Putin agreed that the price for imported from Russia gas would be $450 per 1,000 cubic meters. That was a record price tag. The imported gas from Russia to Ukraine used to cost $95 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2006, and $130 in 2007.
But soon after the agreement, the parties worked out a 20 percent discount, and an average price for imported from Russia gas dropped to around $233 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2009. At the beginning of 2016, Ukraine paid less than $200 when importing gas from the European Union.
Tymoshenko claims that Ukraine got a worse gas price under the disastrous four-year rule of Yanukovych, her tormenter, who overspent nearly $30 billion, according to Tymoshenko’s estimates.
Early elections
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party is ready for elections – both presidential and parliamentary – and doesn’t want to wait until the next scheduled ones in 2019.
Polls show that 15.5 percent of Ukrainians would vote for Batkivshchyna, slightly more than the 14.1 percent that favor the Poroshenko Bloc, which currently is the largest in parliament with 130 of 423 members.
“In the developed countries, when politicians have (poor) people’s trust level, they either step down or go for re-election,” Tymoshenko said. “There, if country leaders are moral, they announce a snap election in order to confirm the mandate of trust. Or if there’s no trust put in them, they resign.”
Speaking to the president directly, she said: “Petro Oleksiyovych, you held pre-term elections when the war was at its height. You did not spare neither Ukraine’s money nor your own effort. Why are you afraid of resigning now and declare the snap election? That would be the right thing to do – The world and Ukraine itself have already understood that regime in Ukraine is corrupt, absolutely not pro-European, and does not serve people.”
Only a complete reboot of the government by voters can move the country forward, in her view.
She believes that a new parliament will not consist of such parties as People’s Front, led by ousted Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, or Poroshenko’s faction.
She believes the next parliament will include Svoboda, Samopomich, Civil Position and the young team that follows Mikheil Saakashvili, ex-governor of Odesa Oblast and leader of newly-formed United National Movement.”
“This will be a brand new parliament,” Tymoshenko said.
Nadiya Savchenko
The question of Nadiya Savchenko, the former soldier who was captured by the Kremlin and set free last year, is a painful one for the Batkivshchyna leader. Savchenko quit the Batkivshchyna Party after she held talks with Kremlin-backed separatist leaders.
“I used to be a woman behind bars, too,” she said. “And she would have never been released if the question of her captivity had not been raised at the highest political level. That’s why we put her as the first number in the list of Batkivshchyna deputies.”
Despite their diverging views that led to a political separation, Tymoshenko said she’s glad she helped Savchenko get out of prison in Russia.
Ukraine’s banking system
The nationalization process of the biggest private bank in Ukraine, PrivatBank, and the large share of Russian banks still on the market are to be blamed on National Bank of Ukraine Governor Valeria Gontareva and Poroshenko, Tymoshenko said.
“And Poroshenko covers it,” she said. “As for PrivatBank – it had been successfully operating for 25 years, but only when Poroshenko and Gontareva came to power the bank had got a Hr 150 billion hole. That’s more than $5 billion. Meanwhile, the whole country kneels for every billion dollar tranche of financial help from the International Monetary Fund. This is a policy that will destroy our country.”
If she’s president
If Tymoshenko gets elected as Ukraine’s sixth president, she promises to fight against offshore companies, a shady customs system and an obsolete tax code.
But corruption – with Poroshenko as the main oligarch – is Ukraine’s sore spot, she said.
“Corruption will vanish when country’s top officials won’t head it,” she said.
And she portrayed herself as clean and corruption-free, even though she made a vast fortune as a natural gas intermediary during the wildly corrupt days of ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, her mentor who served a prison term in America, and ex-President Leonid Kuchma.
But in Tymoshenko’s view, “even Yanukovych could not find a penny” that she had stolen or illegally acquired.
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].
