A second member of Ukraine’s usually fractious political opposition also pivoted to support Ms. Tymoshenko on Monday. Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, a 37-year-old former chairman of Parliament and foreign minister, attended the court on Monday to hear the motions for Ms. Tymoshenko’s release. He emerged to tell reporters that the trial was “a clear threat to Ukrainian democracy.”
“This is not just personal support for the former prime minister,” he said. “This is support to the institute of democracy that is opposition. This could happen to anyone in Ukraine’s political environment. We are here to support democracy.”
In another prominent show of support over the weekend, Vitali Klitschko, the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion and an upstart in Ukrainian politics, announced he would delay a title fight planned for September to draw attention to Ms. Tymoshenko’s arrest.
From the
New York Times, Tymoshenko is still in jail. A blog
post in The Economist notes that the former prime minister has been a difficult defendant, but "disrespectful courtroom behaviour hardly justified her arrest". Tymoshenko and her party have been on the defensive since Viktor Yanukovych succeed Viktor Yushchenko as president. While there have been protests against this, Yanukovych hasn't yielded. Ostensibly, she is being
tried for abuse of power when she signed new gas contracts in 2009. However,
Taras Kuzio is correct in claiming that the president created a Yukos style political event whose target is former prime minister and her party.
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