On the night of Jan. 13, the offices of Yulia Tymoshenko, one of Ukraine’s most experienced politicians, were raided by officers from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). They allege that she organized a scheme to bribe lawmakers – including those from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party.
The roughly $40,000 seized during the searches was widely noted as a relatively small sum by Ukrainian standards. The oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who is in custody and also facing trial, commented that the amount “was no reason to bother an elderly woman at all.”
While Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party had been in effect aligned with Zelensky’s majority Servant of the People party, recent audio recordings published by the anticorruption authorities suggest that Tymoshenko intended to “collapse the majority,” triggering a political crisis that, according to interviewed lawmakers, would have allowed her to hold the “golden share” and present herself to the public as a national savior.
With Tymoshenko back in public view, observers are asking: Is she still a political force to be reckoned with, or a political dinosaur desperately trying to avoid being disgraced and imprisoned for corruption?
The latest
Tymoshenko scored a procedural win when the High Anti-Corruption Court relaxed the preventive measures against her on Jan. 26, allowing her greater freedom of movement and communication while her case continues.
The easing of pretrial restrictions followed her release on bail was paid by nine individuals. The amount – Hr.33 million hryvnias ($772,000) – is relatively modest by Ukrainian standards at this level.
Some say this case has returned Tymoshenko to active political maneuvering – even as she remains under investigation for alleged corruption.
This is important because, for decades, her party has functioned as a leader-centered political force built on strong ties with regional elites and a leadership composed largely of individuals personally loyal to her.
For her part, Tymoshenko stated in court that the criminal case against her is an attempt by the authorities to undermine her Fatherland party as a political force.
Is this really so? And what is the political trajectory of Tymoshenko – a two-time prime minister (2005; 2007–2010) who has been in opposition to nearly every Ukrainian president?
Who is Yulia Tymoshenko?
More than three decades separate Tymoshenko, 65, from the young woman in post-Soviet industrial Dnipropetrovsk who, in 1991, launched a fuel-trading business. Together with her husband Oleksandr, she founded the corporation “Ukrainian Gasoline” (KUB).
The company rapidly became a dominant supplier of fuel for agricultural producers in the Dnipropetrovsk region. In the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet supply system gave rise to what became known as “wild capitalism” in Ukraine – marked by monopolization and criminalized business practices.
KUB soon became an important intermediary in agricultural production. Its managers, Tymoshenko and her husband, established business ties with regional authorities, especially the governor of the region, Pavlo Lazarenko. He later became prime minister (1996-1997). Under his tenure, KUB was transformed into the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) – an oil and gas company that expanded into gas trading.
By 1995-1996, UESU reported annual sales of around $11 billion – a substantial figure in a country where a monthly salary of $200 was considered high. The company became a major intermediary in Russian gas supplies to Ukraine, operating in a largely unregulated energy market where firms that secured key regional segments could set prices and earn extraordinary profits. At the same time, overpricing was difficult to prove, and independent law enforcement agencies capable of monitoring the sector were largely absent.
In 1997, Tymoshenko entered parliament and, several years later, became vice prime minister in Viktor Yushchenko’s government. Around this time, she acquired the nickname “the gas princess.”
Meanwhile, UESU’s position began to weaken.
In 1997, President Leonid Kuchma dismissed Lazarenko, who was Tymoshenko’s main political ally and reportedly a very close associate.
Lazarenko fled Ukraine in 1999 after criminal charges were brought against him there. He traveled through Europe and ultimately arrived in the US, where he was arrested and charged in a federal court.
In August 2006, a US federal judge sentenced him to nine years in prison for money laundering, wire fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen property.
Court materials mentioned UESU and Tymoshenko herself as a company potentially involved in laundering, but they never brought charges against Tymoshenko personally.
Through tax claims and administrative pressure, UESU was gradually stripped of its dominant position in the energy market. The company ultimately lost its license for foreign economic activity, effectively ending its gas imports, and was fined more than $1 billion. These financial pressures later became a recurring factor in the political challenges Tymoshenko faced.
But Tymoshenko used this situation to strengthen her image as an opposition politician.
In 1998, she founded the Fatherland Party, which quickly gained support. By 2002, the party entered parliament and later formed the “Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc” together with several centrist and moderately conservative forces.
Fatherland differed from many other Ukrainian parties in that it developed an extensive grassroots network, actively participated in local elections, and maintained local structures that collected voter concerns and passed them up for political resolution.
From the Orange Revolution to imprisonment
In 2004, Tymoshenko supported Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution. After a repeat second round of the presidential election – ordered following allegations of large-scale falsification – Yushchenko defeated the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych.
Yushchenko appointed her prime minister, though after eight months, in the fall of 2005, she was dismissed following political conflict with the president’s team.
From that point, Tymoshenko moved into an opposition position to Yushchenko. The most controversial period of this phase occurred in 2008-2009, when she negotiated with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions about a possible parliamentary coalition and visited Moscow to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During these meetings, Putin publicly criticized Yushchenko, and Tymoshenko’s cheerful interactions with the Russian leader generated strong criticism in Ukraine.
Then, in 2008, during Russia’s war with Georgia, Tymoshenko failed to publicly condemn Moscow’s actions, and her party blocked a parliamentary initiative aimed at doing so.
Later, as prime minister, she concluded gas supply agreements with Russia – agreements that would later form the basis of criminal charges against her.
Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party, at that time, was the largest in parliament, which she controlled together with allies, and she ran for president.
However, due perhaps both to a series of miscalculations and a lack of support from Yushchenko – with whom she had waged a long, irreconcilable struggle – in the spring of 2010, Yanukovych won the presidency.
He immediately began persecuting Tymoshenko as his main competitor.
The formal pretext was the same gas agreements with Russia, which were drafted during the period when Tymoshenko, according to the investigation, exceeded her authority, while the real reason was clearly political.
Yanukovych feared another revolution. Moreover, as members of parliament from the Party of Regions told this author at the time, it was his revenge for Tymoshenko’s confrontation with his Donetsk clan back in the 1990s and her support for the Orange Revolution.
After a high-profile trial that took place with numerous procedural violations, Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison.
However, Yanukovych’s presidency came to an abrupt end in early 2014, following the Euromaidan protests, which escalated into the Revolution of Dignity after security forces violently cracked down on demonstrators.
Tymoshenko was released shortly thereafter. However, she failed to regain her previous political influence. She lost the 2014 presidential election to Petro Poroshenko, and her party’s parliamentary representation steadily declined and currently numbers 26 (compared to more than 150 in 2007).
And in 2019, her chance to become president was finally buried by Volodymyr Zelensky.
Or not?
The Zelensky period and the war
During Poroshenko’s presidency, Tymoshenko and her party increasingly shifted toward populism, emphasizing left-wing slogans – particularly opposition to the land market, whose long-term absence had fueled corruption and rural impoverishment.
Tymoshenko correctly sensed the direction of global political trends. Yet even here, she was outmaneuvered by Zelensky, who campaigned in 2019 under the slogan “no promises, no apologies.”
After her defeat, the question arose: could Tymoshenko reinvent herself as a political force?
Initially, the answer seemed to be no. Despite having several young and capable MPs, Tymoshenko and Fatherland largely followed the voting line of Zelensky’s party and became de facto participants in an undeclared parliamentary majority.
The peak of this cooperation came on July 22, 2025, when Tymoshenko’s party voted in sync with Zelensky’s majority to undermine the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions.
Tymoshenko argued that Ukraine was freeing itself from “colonial dependence” imposed by the West.
“Today the Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine’s parliament] made the first step toward restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty. I believe that step by step we will repeal all laws that contradict Ukraine’s national interests,” she stated, and called for abolishing altogether all laws developed by international institutions and advisory bodies.
However, the scandal surrounding the NABU and SAPO investigation alleges that Tymoshenko offered money to lawmakers in exchange for votes – raising two key questions: to whom, and why?
The recordings
In keeping with its usual practice, NABU published recordings of Tymoshenko’s conversations.
They reveal her not as a fading political veteran but as a sharp and calculating figure. In one recording, she says, “[We’re] voting only for dismissals, not for appointments.”
During recent attempts by Zelensky to carry out personnel reshuffles, her party and several allied lawmakers indeed refused to vote for the appointment of a new energy minister, even amid wartime and Russian missile strikes.
It remains unclear which deputies, if any, allegedly bribed by Tymoshenko, may have provided information to investigators, but NABU and SAPO appear to have conducted extensive investigations to gather evidence.
The recordings suggest that Tymoshenko intended to wreck the parliamentary majority, triggering a political crisis that, according to interviewed lawmakers, would allow her to emerge as a national savior.
Now, she once again occupies the role of opposition politician, though the political context is very different from her earlier confrontations with Yanukovych. Criticizing Zelensky no longer carries the same sense of boldness it once did, and openly questioning Western support at this juncture carries additional risks.
What’s next?
It is unclear when a rupture may have occurred between Zelensky’s and Tymoshenko’s political parties, ending their de facto coalition.
It is also unclear how the resignation of Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, following a late November 2025 anti-corruption probe, may have been a factor in this situation.
Tymoshenko is now calling for a reduction of Ukraine’s “dependence on the West” at a time when Western assistance is widely regarded as critical to Ukraine’s survival, military success, and institutional reforms. This message reflects her current strategy of appealing to voters who are weary of the war and more inclined to criticize Zelensky rather than Putin, largely because Zelensky is far more exposed than the leader of the aggressor state.
In this context, she has even occasionally echoed narratives that critics associate with Russian propaganda, for example, calling the administration “fascist” in court.
It is not clear how her case before the High Anti-Corruption Court, which is already the third significant inquiry in her career, will end.
For the time being, Tymoshenko is once again in the limelight. But with her populist messages and harsh language, she could end up isolated because other opposition groups, both on the right and in the center, including Poroshenko’s party, aren’t in a hurry to support her.
The question is whether the recent prosecution will help promote her political future. Or, has the gas princess finally gone too far?