You're reading: Tymoshenko new target for dirty election campaign

Despite serving prison time, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was featured in contraversial hour-long documentary.

As political ads fill billboards and media all over the country ahead of the Oct. 28 parliament elections, Yulia Tymoshenko is once again becoming a target for some of the most controversial tricks, despite the fact that she’s in prison and has no chance to run.

On June 23 and 24 at least half a dozen local TV channels in different parts of Ukraine broadcast the documentary about the jailed opposition leader. Called The Princess and the Pea, is refers to the popular fairytale. But the plot is far from it.

The hour-long documentary accuses the ex-prime minister of faking her backache, among other things. She is being treated in a Kharkiv hospital for spinal hernia, which is painful and often makes walking difficult.

In the film, her prison doctor speaks on the record, saying that her condition is “not unusual for a person over 40” and argues that “10 per cent of prisoners in jail suffer from it too.”

Moreover, Tymoshenko is also criticized for being “unwilling to lead the same life as other female prisoners” like wearing a robe, eating prison food, visiting the prison gym and engaging in other daily activities.

“Being used to the life of luxury, she is very far from real people,” says the commentator, pointing to the fact that Tymoshenko fakes her condition to not only “fool the public,” but to “lead a privileged life in prison.”

Oleg Kalashnikov

Tymoshenko is even accused of having never visited the prison chapel. Tymoshenko is not given a chance to speak for herself in the movie, though, even through her team members.
The opposition and media experts say the film is “sheer propaganda.”

“This is done in the very best traditions of moron TV. It’s done to discredit the leader of the opposition. It is an awful manipulation that discredits journalism as a profession and the whole country,” says Yuriy Stets, an opposition parliament member who now heads its freedom of speech committee.
Nevertheless, the film was broadcast at government-owned regional TV stations in Vinnytsya, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk and several other regions.

Stets says TV stations should be ashamed “even though rejecting [this film] might have caused [managers] their jobs.”

The film’s author is Oleg Kalashnikov, who is an active anti-Tymoshenko campaigner, and a former Party of Regions member who was expelled from the party in 2007 for using violence against journalists. He and TV channels that aired the film refuse to reveal whether it was paid-for broadcasting, akin to advertisement, or provided as free content. Kalashnikov nonetheless stressed that the film was educational and enlightening.

“People deserve to know the truth about the illegal activities of Tymoshenko, and we are trying to bring them the truth,” he told the Kyiv Post in a telephone interview.

Kalashnikov has been at the helm of the anti-Tymoshenko campaign since May 2011, when the Kyiv Pechersk District Court started hearing her case. It was his voice that blasted out of speakers set up in an anti-Tymoshenko camp on Khreshchatyk. He listed her alleged misdeeds in a direct and uncompromising manner.

Kalashnikov declined to reveal the budget of the film, but claimed the money came from the All-military Union of Ukraine, a nongovernmental organization that he heads.

The film is Kalashnikov’s second attempt to “educate the public” about Tymoshenko through documentaries. His first movie, Prosto Yulya ran on local channels on Jan. 4.

In that film Tymoshenko was accused, among other things, of engaging in corrupt activities with Pavlo Lazarenko, the former prime minister who is now serving a term in US jail for money laundering, embezzlement and fraud.

Director of Mass Information Institute Viktoriya Sumar says this is “classic propaganda” designed to “convince people that Tymoshenko deserved jail.”

Stets promised to raise the issue at the next meeting of the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech. However, such hearings have very little impact on media programming.

The committee has previously debated the Prosto Yulya documentary, but the broadcasters simply brushed all accusations off.

Vasyl Yurychko, head of the state owned UTR – Ukrainian TV and radio service then said that he does not understand why the film is deemed by the committee as manipulative and claimed “the film did not break any laws”.

Heads of the local state owned TV stations that ran the film declined to comment on, saying only that broadcasting the documentary is “a part of cooperation with UTR which obtained the rights to broadcast”.

Tymoshenko’s spokesperson Maryna Soroka says the “volume of dirt” against the opposition will only increase as the election nears.

Kalashnikov agrees. He says his unnamed investigative journalists are seeking new facts and continue their investigation.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]