You're reading: Tymoshenko still hopes to visit Brussels

Bohdan Ferents, the lawyer for former Ukrainian Premier and Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, has asked Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka to order the investigator to review the ban on Tymoshenko's traveling abroad.

"This is a petition to the prosecutor general so that he obliges the investigator to review the refusal to satisfy Tymoshenko’s petition to go abroad," he told journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The lawyer said that the law gives three days to respond to such a request.

Ferents said that the request to the prosecutor general had been registered in the required manner. He recalled that in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code, the investigator is an independent figure and resolves such issues by himself.

As reported, the Prosecutor General’s Office explained that Tymoshenko had not been allowed to visit Brussels as she had not provided her invitation to visit Brussels in the proper way.

"Allowing a person who is under house arrest to go abroad is not the duty, but the right of the investigator, i.e. under his direct procedural competence," the office said.

Tymoshenko said after questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday that the investigator had not satisfied her request to visit Brussels to meet with the EU leadership and the leadership of the European People’s Party as she has provided an invitation in English, and "they [Prosecutor General’s Office employees] don’t understand what it says."

The press service of the BYT-Batkivschyna Party reported that the invitation for Tymoshenko to visit Brussels would be submitted to the prosecutor’s office by her lawyer on Wednesday.