You're reading: Lutsenko to do his best for opposition to nominate single candidate for president

Kyiv, April 23 - Former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko, who was sentenced to four years in prison, has said that he will participate in the presidential election in 2015, but has not yet decided whether he will run for the presidency.

"I will definitely participate in the next presidential campaign, because it is a real chance for the peaceful removal of the current anti-Ukrainian and gangster government," he said in a written interview with the Ukrainian Week magazine.

He said that he would do everything to ensure that the democratic forces nominate a single candidate for the post of president.

"I did not think about running [for president], and I believe that my mission is to organize a broad movement of resistance to the regime," Lutsenko said.

He also said that he has been in "constant contact" with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a sentence in the Kachanivska penal colony in Kharkiv for abuse of office in signing a "gas contract" with Russia Federation in 2009.

"In my letters, I’m trying to express human and political support for her, sharing my assessment of events, proposing my own ideas, and recommending the most interesting books," Lutsenko said.

Lutsenko was detained near his home on December 26, 2010. On December, 27 Pechersky District Court in Kyiv ordered his arrest due to the fact that "the defendant did not [attend interviews with] the investigator, thus grossly violating the requirements envisaged by a travel ban."

On February 27, 2012, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv found Lutsenko guilty of committing official crimes and sentenced him to four years in prison, with confiscation of his property.

On April 17, the European Court of Human Rights held a public hearing of Lutsenko’s complaint regarding the illegality of his arrest and detention.