KHARKIV - Leaders of the United Opposition have brought 365 white roses for Ukraine's ex-prime Yulia Tymoshenko to mark the number of days she has spent in jail and at Kharkiv hospital.
“Today we came to support Yulia, to say that she is not just a strong
personality, not just a beautiful woman, but a real Ukrainian woman,
not broken, and we are together with her today. We have 365 white roses
here. She has been in prison for 365 days, and I sincerely believe that
we will be giving roses to one another and to Yulia Volodymyrivna only
on big holiday occasions, and that these are the last roses in relation
to her imprisonment,” the Front for Change leader Arseniy Yatseniuk told
reporters in Kharkiv.
Although the opposition leaders who have arrived in Kharkiv have no
permission for a personal meeting with Tymoshenko, as parliamentarians
they are entitled to unhindered access to prison grounds and people held
in custody, he said.
“We will carry these roses as far as the last police checkpoint,” the politician said.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent said that the flowers for
Tymoshenko were handed to the security guard. Tymoshenko’s supporters,
who gathered outside the hospital, launched red and white balloons into
the sky in front of the window of Tymoshenko’s ward.
Other opposition leaders who came to Kharkiv were Civil Position
leader Anatoliy Hrytsenko, Popular Rukh of Ukraine leader Borys
Tarasiuk, Reform and Order leader Serhiy Sobolev, former interior
minister Yuriy Lutsenko’s wife Iryna, Tymoshenko’s defense attorney
Serhiy Vlasenko and MP Serhiy Pashynsky.
Tymoshenko is undergoing a course of treatment at a hospital in Kharkiv.
