The Pechersky Court of Kyiv has started to study the materials of a lawsuit lodged by Batkivschyna Party leader and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko against the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office for opening a criminal investigation related to the 2009 Ukrainian-Russian gas contracts against the former premier.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported that the sitting of the court was moved to a bigger courtroom that can fit larger number of people.
MPs, Tymoshenko’s supporters, reporters and TV camera operators attended the sitting.
Tymoshenko’s defense lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, asked the court for additional time to study the materials in full.
The court said that the defense lawyer could have some more time, and then the court started to examine the materials of the case.
Meanwhile, the judge read page-by-page all of the evidence of eyewitnesses of the circumstances that led to the signing of the gas contracts.
After a two-hour hearing of the materials, Tymoshenko asked for a ten-minute break, but the judge refused this. Tymoshenko left the courtroom.
"They’re starving us into surrender. The court has turned into a farce," Tymoshenko told reporters after she left the courtroom.
At the same time, Tymoshenko said that the materials include over 1,000 pages, and only 100 pages had been read over two hours.
