The Batkivshchyna Party, led by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, refutes criminal charges against her today by the General Prosecutor’s Office. The party dismisses as “politically motivated” allegations that the former premier misused funds received under the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. Tymoshenko has been told not to leave the capital of Kyiv.
According to Hryhoriy Nemyria, deputy head of the Batkivshchyna Party, on Dec. 16 Tymoshenko, leader of the Batkivshchyna Party, was scheduled to take part in a Brussels assembly of heads of the European institutions, and heads of states and governments of the European Union member-states.
Nemyria stated that a meeting between Tymoshenko and Stefan Fule, European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy, was planned for noon on Dec. 16.
“As far as we know, President Yanukovych ordered the General Prosecutor’s Office to take a written undertaking from Yulia Tymoshenko, on far-fetched grounds, all in order to prevent the leader of the opposition from leaving the country and communicating with European leaders,” Nemyria said.
“It is an example of open and cynical pressure on Ukraine’s opposition leader. It is an act of political warfare by the President of Ukraine against his main political competitor in the next parliamentary and presidential elections,” Nemyria said. “Such actions show that the pro-European rhetoric, which Yanukovych is so keen to demonstrate in public, in reality has nothing in common with his authoritarian, anti-democratic actions that are setting Ukraine back decades," stressed the former deputy prime minister and one of Batkivshchyna’s party leaders.
