You're reading: …or looking at 10 years in prison, sewing for a living?

If convicted, life will be very unpleasant for the former prime minister.

If former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is convicted of abuse-of-office charges and sentenced to prison, she will have to cast aside her designer outfits and beloved iPad and get used to communal living and work such as sewing.

Tymoshenko faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of exceeding her authority in reaching a January 2009 energy agreement with Russia. Her trial resumes on Sept. 27.

If Tymoshenko is sent to prison, she’ll face a tough regime of work, with an austere wardrobe and uncomfortable living conditions.

According to Ihor Andrushko, deputy head of the Department of Corrections in Kyiv Oblast, a special commission decides what kind of prison life awaits the convicted person – whether the prisoner faces a general, strict or special regime. As a first-time offender, Tymoshenko would likely get a more lenient – or general – regime.

The location of the prison, or zona in Russian slang, is often selected based on a convict’s permanent place of residence. Tymoshenko is still registered as residing in her home city of Dnipropetrovsk, so she is likely to be imprisoned there.

“We always consider the social connections of a convict,” Andrushko said. The prisoner “must be placed in a place where his relatives can easily reach him and come on visits.”

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has only two female prisons. The one closest to Tymoshenko’s registered home is Dniprodzerzhynsk Penal Colony for Females No. 34. It is a general regime prison with no extraordinary security features.

All convicts in Ukrainian prisons work 7 or 8 hours a day, except for weekends. The most common job in female prisons is sewing.


Ihor Andrushko, deputy head of the
Department of Corrections in Kyiv Oblast.

According to Dniprodzerzhynsk penal colony’s website, convicts there produce bed linen and various uniforms. Prisoners get to keep part of the money raised from the sale of items.

“Every convict gets his own bank account, where all the money earned is transferred to,” said Nina Novitska, the head of Nation’s Health and Development Foundation, a non-governmental organization that works to improve prison conditions.

“A convict’s relatives can send money using this account, but the only way to use the money behind bars is buying something in the prison shop. Usually they have some toiletries and simple food products, like tea, canned goods and oil.”

Most convicts are settled in huge barracks, where often more than 100 people live together. The lucky ones are moved to room settlement colonies, with fewer inmates.

Inmates are limited to four pairs of shoes; many live in communal barracks with 100 cellmates.

“At the end of my imprisonment I was living in a room with 20 other women, and that was so great! Before that I had to live in a barrack with 180 people in it,” recalled Anna, an ex-prisoner who didn’t want to be identified to avoid public stigma.

In prison, Tymoshenko will have to forget about her Twitter account. Computers, cell phones and other gadgets are strictly forbidden in jail. She also will find her fashion options limited, as prisoners are limited to four pairs of shoes.

Tymoshenko’s bathing may be limited to once a week, although convictsave learned how to bathe in toilets, warming the water with a portable heater.

“Actually it is forbidden to have a heater. So it’s a matter of luck: Whether a jailer notices it or not. Also there is a lack of sockets; there can be only two of them for the whole barrack. So there are huge queues to use those,” Anna said.

The daily schedule in jails is tough, with a 6 a.m. wakeup call. There is debate over the quality of food, with Novitska of the Nation’s Health and Development Foundation saying she’s never heard complaints.

However, ex-prisoner Anna said: “They were giving us wet bread. You could actually squeeze the water out of it. I have no idea what it was made of, but there was no way anyone could eat it.”

As a famous person, Tymoshenko will also get tagged with a mildly derogatory nickname – shokoladnitsa, meaning chocolate, or rich, person – given to big bosses or top officials among the prison ranks.

But Anna said she believes Tymoshenko will make friends easily in prison. “If she is good at communicating, she won’t have problems. The most important thing for her to say is: ‘I’m just like you, girls’ on her very first day,” the ex-convict said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected].