You're reading: In announcing presidential candidacy, Tymoshenko vows to defeat Putin, Ukraine’s oligarchy

Yulia Tymoshenko is back in the political ring and swinging – at Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the oligarchs who control Ukraine’s politics and economy, and at her potential competitors in the May 25 presidential election.

In announcing
her presidential candidacy on March 27, the twice-imprisoned, two-time prime minister (2005, 2007-2010) said
that Ukraine – while facing the prospect of a full-scale military invasion from
the Kremlin – has the chance to remake itself and shed its Soviet legacy after
nearly 23 years.

At the same
time, Tymoshenko – released from prison on Feb. 22, the same day that the
EuroMaidan Revolution toppled her political nemesis Viktor Yanukovych as
president – said that she is powerless to stop Putin’s advance right now.

“I think that
the level of aggression from the Kremlin cannot be regulated by negotiations
with Ukraine,” Tymoshenko told a news conference. “I think it can only be
solved by direct negotiations of world leaders with Putin, who is the author
and executor of war with Ukraine. If i thought my help in negotiations with
Putin would bring any result, don’t doubt that i would go that very moment and
negotiate.”

She considers
Putin “to be enemy number one for Ukraine. And I think we have to do everything
to stop the aggressor, and also return Crimea. I think this is the first honest
presidential election in Ukraine. Also, in this election there will be no
competition between a pro-Russia and pro-European candidate.”

If elected,
however, Tymoshenko said that she will rebuild the nation’s defenses.



Yulia Tymoshenko enters the courtyard ahead of her press conference in Kyiv on March 27. (Photo: Katya Gorchinskaya)

Yulia Tymoshenko enters the courtyard ahead of her press conference in Kyiv on March 27. (batkivshchyna.com.ua)

“Most Ukrainians feel anxious about war, and want to
feel safe in their country,” she said. “I think i can create a powerful system
of national defense, a modern and effective army, and take all steps to arm the
army with the most modern weapons. I am convinced that I can take all actions
to stand up to aggression and return Crimea.”

And she wouldn’t let Putin’s troops conquer the
mainland.

“To implement
all my ideas how to stop the aggressor, I have to have the power,” she said. “I
am convinced we’re not going to allow the aggressor even a few steps into
continental Ukraine.”

If not
her, then Poroshenko

She also
signaled her favored choice for president, if voters don’t turn the nation over
to her. “If Petro Poroshenko wins, I will help preserve the unity of the nation and
true reform,” Tymoshenko said, referring to the millionaire businessman and
member of parliament.

Would keep Yatsenyuk as prime minister

She also
supports the idea of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who led the Batkivshchyna Party while
she was in prison, staying on as prime minister if she is elected president. “At
the time when Ukraine needs tough, cruel steps, Arseniy Yatseniuk has the
courage to take them,” she said.

Tymoshenko outlined several reasons why she believes
she’s the best person to lead Ukraine to a brighter economic and democratic
future.

“With the fall of authoritarianism, we received the
ability to build the country from scratch, to mold it,” she said. “If our
effort in building a democratic Ukraine is successful, we will not just change
the country – we will change the world. Communication with elites – I think I
will be able to meet this challenge. We can build the nation with the help of
the strongest intellectual elites.”

Tymoshenko also said her prison term on a trumped-up
charge in the Yanukovych administration gives her additional credibility as a
democratic reformer who stood up to the former regime’s corruption.

“The 2.5 years I spent in prison were 2.5 years of
terror and torture,” she said. “I felt myself how not a single law works. I
felt what every Ukrainian feels in everyday life. Most things I felt none of
the people sitting in the Verkhovna Rada cannot possibly feel, they can only read
about it in the mass media. To understand the full tragedy, one has to live it,
one has to feel it though the heart.”

She took a swipe at the crowded presidential field,
saying that “none of the politicians who are running for president understand
the depth of lawlessness and do not strive to fix it.”

Tymoshenko will destroy oligarchy

She also said that she would destroy Ukraine’s
oligarchic system under which less than 1 percent of the nation control most of
the economy, while most of the nation’s 45 million people live in dire poverty.

“Building a modern, European and successful Ukraine is
impossible without removing the oligarchy we have lived with at least 15 years,”
Tymoshenko said. “Oligarchy is not just a swear word, it’s a system of
relations between the business and the power on all levels. The oligarchy
organized monopolies that are incompatible with standards of life for all
people. I am different from all the candidates. I can divide the business and
politics, and the business will stay alive and will no longer influence
politics.”

Tymoshenko said that “corruption has permeated all
spheres of life. But for 22 years politicians have been filing anti-corruption
laws in parliament, getting grant money from Western governments and reporting back…
but nothing has really changed in 22 years, and corruption has remained a part
of our lives,” she said. “But regular Ukrainians not only feel that nothing has
changed, but has entered their lives again. I may be the only political leader
who has demonstrated how to roll back corruption in whole spheres of economy.”

Tymoshenko also reminded the public of how she had
been imprisoned once before when she tried to attack Ukraine’s rotten way of
doing business.

“You remember how my corruption fight ended in 2000? It
ended with my first prison term. The crisis years of 2008-2009 was related to the
corruption fight as well, and the company RosUkrEnergo, whose leadership is now
criminally prosecuted at international levels,” Tymoshenko said. “Prison is not
shame, it’s not humiliation for me. It’s like state honors for corruption
fight. If someone tells you corruption is impossible to fight, don’t believe
them. None of the presidential candidates can do it with the same quality, cleaness
and result that i can.”

Tymoshenko made her fortune under the tutelage of the
incredibly corrupt ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who spent 10 years in an
American federal prison for money laundering and other convictions. She was
known as Ukraine’s “gas princess,” for amassing a huge share of Ukraine’s
economy through the old gas-trading tricks – getting special purchasing prices
and rights from Russia and the Ukrainian government – and then selling it to at
much-higher market prices.

But Tymoshenko has for years said that she divorced
herself from her patrons, Lazarenko and ex-President Leonid Kuchma, many years
ago, and came clean when she entered politics. She cited as proof the failed efforts
by Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to find wrongdoing on her
part. That prompted, she said, an “abuse-of-office” conviction in 2011 that
many regard as politically motivated.

“The previous government searched for corruption in my
actions could not find any,” Tymoshenko said. “I passed the corruption audit of
Yanukovych and Azarov. I have the moral right (to fight corruption) because
even Yanukovych could not find corruption in my actions.”

She said that her Batkivshchyna Party has won all
elections in western and central Ukraine, even though she is from Dnipropetrovsk
in eastern Ukraine, where she spent a third of her 53 years.

“I am from there, and my parents, my family still live
there. I think I will be the candidates of national unity. I think that I will
be able to find arguments for my mother, who still lives in Dnipropetrovsk and
people who live there.”

Tymoshenko challenged the other candidates to spend
money not on campaigning and advertising, but on financially supporting Ukraine’s
armed forces.

“I think that today, in the country that has been
looted, the billboards and advertising videos should be replaced with clear,
transparent and honest debates that would take place to the standards of
European or US-style debates,” she said. “If candidates have spare money for
the ads, it would be better off to send it to the Defense Ministry accounts to
buy a few tanks or armored personnel vehicles. My presidential campaign will be
a campaign of direct action – not promise, but do and then report a few days
later.”

Her motivations
are not personal victory, she said, or personal gain.

“Do I say I
believe in victory? Yes, but I believe in the victory of Ukraine. Do I hope for
victory? Yes, but I hope for the victory for Ukraine.”