Yulia Tymoshenko: the ageless prima donna of Ukrainian politics
For a quarter of a century now, she has been singing sweet songs to her voters and telling captivating tales, writing Klymenko.
When Tymoshenko appeared on the Maidan in a wheelchair, wearing Louboutins, accompanied by her loyal ally Vlasenko, many felt they had seen the scene before, only performed by different actors. Indeed, Yulia Tymoshenko's "triumphant return" was very reminiscent of Alla Pugacheva and Garik Sukachev's music video, "Little by little».
Not only the setting and interlinear dialogue of these two productions were reminiscent, but also the performers themselves. It's worth acknowledging that Tymoshenko plays the same role in Ukrainian politics as Alla Pugacheva did in Russian show business. Even their methods for achieving success and maintaining enduring popularity are virtually identical. These include talentedly voiced, heartfelt lyrics, attracting the right men, and, most importantly, the ultimate commercialization of art and politics.
Yulia Tymoshenko and Alla Pugacheva
But, no matter how one feels about Yulia Tymoshenko, it can be said with certainty that in all thirty years of independence, Ukraine has never had another female politician of such stature who enjoyed such high, enduring popularity.
Origin: Grandfather, grandmother, mother, father
Timoshenko Yulia Vladimirovna She was born on November 27, 1960, in Dnipropetrovsk, and was listed in her birth certificate as Grigyan. It was this surname that sparked increased interest in Yulia Vladimirovna's family tree. Rumors began circulating in the late 90s that she was Armenian, then Evgeny Chervonenko claimed that she was supposedly an Armenian Jew. The rumors were dispelled by a real investigation, conducted, in particular, by political scientist Kost Bondarenko and publicist Dmitry Chobit (who dedicated an entire bookYulia Tymoshenko herself assured voters that her paternal ancestors were Latvian Grigyanus family members, and that all her maternal ancestors were "true Ukrainians." But what's the reality?
If we start from the very beginning, the first in this family tree would be Kelman Gdalevich Kapitelman, who, after the revolution and civil war, moved from his native Nizhny Tagil to Kyiv, where he settled in the apartment of some former bourgeois on Artema Street (now Sichevykh Streltsy Street), apparently being a Red Commissar. His son, Abram Kapitelman (born 1914), after graduating from a food technical school, was sent to Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro), where, while working in a confectionery factory, he met technologist Maria Iosifovna Grigyan, the daughter of railway conductor Iosif Iosifovich Grigan (repressed in 1938, released in 1948, rehabilitated in 1963). Whether I.I. Grigan was Latvian is unknown (he was certainly not Armenian), but he received several letters from relatives in Latvia, which became the basis for his arrest. After which, his daughter apparently changed her surname to Grigyan to "disown" her father, an enemy of the people. Why she didn't simply take her husband's surname is unclear.
In 1937, Abram Kapitelman and Maria Grigyan had a son, Vladimir, whose surname is also unclear. At the very least, it can be assumed that after his father's death at the front in 1944 (during the storming of Sevastopol) or with the onset of Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign (late 40s), he took his mother's surname.
In the late 50s, young engineer Vladimir Abramovich Grigyan married taxi dispatcher Lyudmila Nikolaevna Telegina (divorced), whose maiden name was Nelepova. In 1960, their daughter Yulenka was born. No Ukrainian roots have been found in Lyudmila Nelepova-Telegina, but her grandfather was Yerofey Nelipa (a typical Russian surname). In fact, for some reason, the biography of Tymoshenko's mother remains a closely guarded secret, thickly veiled by hastily concocted tales.
Yulia Tymoshenko with her mother, Lyudmila Telegina
That Yulia Vladimirovna is capable of composing and "improvising" on the fly, without even a blush, was clearly demonstrated by the following fact. In 2016, live on TV channel "112," she decided to exploit the 1933 Holodomor to her advantage once again, stating the following: her grandmother, along with her young mother, fought her way through fields and forests through "blocking detachments" to reach the city and avoid starvation. At that moment, many of Tymoshenko's fans shed tears of sympathy! But here's the rub: her mother was born in 1937, four years after the Holodomor, and not in a village, but in Dnipropetrovsk. Caught in this lie, Tymoshenko didn't even think to apologize!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV2PrxgS6l4&ab_channel=5%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB
Yulia Tymoshenko: Childhood, Youth, and College
When Yulia Tymoshenko was only two years old, her parents divorced. Vladimir Abramovich Grigyan eventually remarried, to Lyudmila Voitenko, and in 1969, he had a son, also named Vladimir—Yulia Tymoshenko's half-brother. Yulia Tymoshenko maintained little contact with them. Her aunt (her mother's sister), Antonina Ulyakhina (née Nelepova), raised her. In gratitude, Tymoshenko, back in the early 90s, appointed her general director of Beyutaga (a granite slab manufacturer), and then the permanent chairperson of the Dnipropetrovsk-based Batkivshchyna party. Today, Beyutaga, as well as the dairy business, is run by Aunt Tonya's daughter, Tatyana Valerievna Sharapova (Tymoshenko's cousin), and her husband, Ruslan Yuryevich Sharapov.
Antonina Ulyakhina
Yulia Grigyan attended Dnipropetrovsk School No. 75, graduating in 1977. According to her teachers, she was a "B" student, attended rhythmic gymnastics, and preferred playing with boys to playing with dolls—which, apparently, is where she learned to "manipulate" boys.
Yulia Grigyan at school
She only entered the Dnipropetrovsk Mining Institute (Faculty of Automation and Telemechanics) in 1978, apparently on her second try. Moreover, according to media reports, by her first year, she was already using her mother's surname, Telegina (to spite her father?).
It was then that she met her future husband, Alexander Timoshenko, the son of Gennady Afanasyevich Timoshenko, then chairman of the Kirovsky District Executive Committee of Dnipropetrovsk. How did this "Cinderella" from a taxi dispatcher's family manage to snag a real prince? According to the legend told by Yulia Vladimirovna herself, it allegedly happened back in 1977, romantically and by chance: Alexander Timoshenko called her because he had dialed the wrong number. They struck up a conversation, became friends, and began dating.
But her aunt Ulyana, in her book "Yulia, Yulechka," offers a more prosaic and pragmatic version of this meeting: in the summer of 1979, Yulia Telegina, a student at the Mining Institute, and Oleksandr Timoshenko, a student at Dnipropetrovsk University, worked as Pioneer counselors at the same camp, where they became very close. They were married on September 15, and on February 20, 1980, their daughter, Evgenia, was born. However, if we subtract nine months from the birth date, it turns out that her parents met at least in the spring, not the summer of 1979. So the real details of their meeting remained a personal secret. And Antonina Ulyakhina's book is simply riddled with "inaccuracies."
Yulia and Alexander Tymoshenko
Because Yulia Tymoshenko had to take maternity leave, her studies were interrupted until 1981. She chose not to re-enroll at the Mining Institute and transferred to her husband's economics department at Dnipropetrovsk University (with the help of her father-in-law). After graduating in 1984, Tymoshenko found work as an engineer and economist at the Dnipro Machine-Building Plant, which was then producing electronic components for air defense and missile defense systems.
Yulia Tymoshenko and her small business
The prospect of eventually becoming the plant's chief accountant didn't appeal to the ambitious Yulia Tymoshenko. But then, opportunely, perestroika arrived, legalizing "cooperation" and lifting censorship of foreign films. Meanwhile, Gennady Tymoshenko had just transferred to the regional executive committee, where he became head of the film distribution department. True, this "promotion" felt more like a disgrace (he went from running a district to managing movie theaters), but it's worth noting that a detailed biography of Gennady Tymoshenko is, for some reason, not publicly available.
Be that as it may, this gave the Tymoshenko family the opportunity to open not just one video salon, but an entire chain, generating colossal and virtually unaccountable profits. This allowed them to quickly accumulate a substantial start-up capital. Furthermore, if desired, the video salons could be used to launder even more dirty money from gangsters (racketeers, thimble-rigging).
In 1989, the Tymoshenko couple registered their chain of video salons as the Terminal youth center, operating under the auspices of the regional committee of the LKSMU, whose first secretary was then Sergey Tigipko, and his deputy for propaganda and culture Alexander TurchinovIt was then that Tymoshenko befriended Turchynov, later making him one of her closest allies. But her most important acquaintance at that time, the one that gave her a golden ticket to the magical land of big business, was Pavlo Lazarenko, who was elected chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council in 1990.
Yulia Tymoshenko, Oleksandr Turchynov, Pavlo Lazarenko
Big Business: CUB
Acquaintances described Gennady Afanasyevich Timoshenko as a man with golden hands and a kind heart, but completely inept at business. Therefore, while working under Pavlo Lazarenko, he was only able to negotiate the participation of his son and daughter-in-law in a new business venture, the Ukrainian Gasoline Corporation (UGC), which launched in May 1991. Its founder was businessman Alexander Gravets, whose offshore company, Somolli Enterprises Limited, was a co-founder of the corporation (85%) and granted it the status of a joint venture enjoying tax breaks. However, the main point wasn't the breaks, but the de facto monopoly on fuel supplies to the region, primarily to agricultural enterprises, which Pavlo Lazarenko secured for a share of the profits.
Initially, it was assumed that Alexander Tymoshenko would head the family business, and his wife would serve as his commercial director. However, Yulia Vladimirovna proved to have an overdeveloped commercial acumen, as well as other communication skills—she could easily reach agreements with anyone and about anything. Therefore, Yulia Tymoshenko soon became the de facto head of KUB, and from there, her large-scale business began. Only her stake was in question: officially, Alexander and Yulia Tymoshenko owned only 5% of KUB each, but they also had a stake in Somolli Enterprises Limited, the amount of which remained unknown. It was from Somolli's accounts that, in just three years (1992-94), money was transferred to Lazarenko's accounts. listed about one hundred million dollars - a fabulous sum at that time!
But KUB wasn't just involved in gasoline and diesel fuel. In 1992, he co-founded the Sodruzhestvo corporation, which from 1992 to 95 served as the main Ukrainian dealer for the Russian gas company Itera (supplying up to 9 billion cubic meters of gas per year). This marked the beginning of Yulia Tymoshenko's career as Ukraine's "gas princess!" Tymoshenko's partner in Sodruzhestvo was the Interpipe Scientific and Production Association, owned by Viktor Pinchuk (the future oligarch), his father. To Mikhail Pinchuk (the founder of the family business), his first wife, Elena Arshava (the second will be Leonid Kuchma's daughter), and his father-in-law, Vladimir Arshava (the head of the regional health department and a friend of Lazorenko). Incidentally, Antonina Ulyakhina claimed that Tymoshenko and Pinchuk only met in 1995.
In the spring of 1995, Yulia Tymoshenko found herself behind bars for the first time: she was arrested while attempting to board a flight from Zaporizhzhia to Moscow with $26 in her purse. Since Dnipropetrovsk Governor Lazarenko was of little esteem with the Zaporizhzhia prosecutor's office, Yulia Tymoshenko's release from pretrial detention had to be negotiated by Viktor Pinchuk himself.
Yulia Tymoshenko. Even Bigger Business: UESU Corporation
A few months later, Pinchuk himself experienced personal troubles, leading Interpipe to leave the Commonwealth. However, on September 25, 1995, Pavlo Lazarenko was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine for the Fuel and Energy Complex. Immediately afterward, Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleksandr Gravets re-registered KUB as the Industrial and Financial Concern United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UES) CJSC, better known as the UESU Corporation.
Gravets received a much smaller stake in it than in KUB, and soon left UESU altogether, moving to Israel to avoid harm. The corporation became entirely Tymoshenko's family business: she took over as president, appointed her father-in-law as CEO, her husband as CEO of the subsidiary company "Transport," and appointed her mother, Aunt Tonya, and cousin Tanya to head other UESU structures. But the key figure remained behind the scenes: Pavlo Lazarenko had no formal connection to UESU, yet it was he who secured the corporation a government contract to supply Ukraine with over 25 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year, making it the country's largest private gas company.
Yulia Tymoshenko: The times of the UESU
Yulia Tymoshenko's income was legendary at the time: it was said she was a multi-billionaire and the richest woman in Europe, and that she could easily buy up all of Ukraine's businesses. However, even the investigators, who compiled over 500 volumes of material on the UESU case, were unable to determine the exact amount of her income at the time! Tymoshenko's visible expenses, however, were relatively "modest": in the mid-1990s, she built herself a rather ugly mansion in the center of Dnipropetrovsk, while nearby were the "khatyns" of her mother, aunt, and cousin. In the 2000s, her entire family moved to more expensive and spacious houses near Kyiv, but Tymoshenko retained her old apartment in Dnipropetrovsk for the press, occasionally showing journalists her mother, who supposedly lived there.
Yulia Tymoshenko's first mansion
First steps in politics. "Hromada" and "Batkivshchyna"
In 1996, some smart people advised Yulia Tymoshenko to seek a parliamentary seat. Perhaps it was Lazarenko himself, since it was the prime minister who helped her resoundingly win re-election in the 229th constituency in the Kirovohrad region: he ordered that months of pension and salary arrears be paid within a few days. Tymoshenko herself promised voters in the constituency gas and water services and delivered 5 tons of coal for low-income rural families. As the saying goes, she warmed them with warmth and words! In gratitude, she received over 90% of the vote—a fantastic result—and was also awarded the St. Barbara Medal by the Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate for her donation to the church restoration.
During her first parliamentary term (January 1997 – May 1998), Yulia Tymoshenko didn't particularly stand out. She initially joined the Constitutional Center faction, and after Lazarenko's removal as prime minister, she became deputy chair of his Hromada faction. Interestingly, Hromada was founded by Turchynov back in 1994, later "gifting" the party to Lazarenko.
But Tymoshenko's defection to the radical opposition was not so much a move in support of Lazarenko as a response to the "repressions" that befell UESU. The corporation was slapped with a massive fine of 1,5 billion hryvnias (almost $900 million at the then exchange rate), its shares in enterprises were confiscated, and a number of criminal cases were opened—effectively bankrupting it by the end of 1997.
Tymoshenko's second term in parliament also didn't start off very well: in the 1998 elections, in a constituency in the same Kirovohrad region, Tymoshenko received only about 38%. That was the voters' assessment of her unfulfilled promises!
Interestingly, from that moment on, Tymoshenko became a fervent supporter of a fully proportional parliamentary election model. However, not because it guaranteed her a seat in the Rada, being in the top five on the party list. It's simply that Yulia Tymoshenko was one of the first to see the prospect of selling favorable spots on party lists in exchange for generous, sometimes multi-million dollar, "donations."
After Lazarenko's flight and arrest in February 1999, Tymoshenko, along with Turchynov, left Hromada and founded her own political project, Batkivshchyna (where Turchynov became her long-term deputy). She then began searching for new allies and patrons, eventually finding Viktor Yushchenko's inner circle.
Yulia Tymoshenko and the "Orange" Team
In December 1999, following persistent advice from the West and the request of Ukrainian national patriots, Kuchma appointed Viktor Yushchenko as Ukraine's new prime minister, who immediately appointed Yulia Tymoshenko as deputy prime minister for the fuel and energy sector. Having gained significant power, Tymoshenko immediately launched a reform of the Ukrainian energy sector, which many called a war for the redistribution of energy flows and spheres of influence, a struggle to privatize important enterprises. This provoked a sharp reaction from the "Kuchma elite," who began pressuring the president to resign. This ultimately escalated into a war against the entire Yushchenko government and laid the foundations for future political confrontation.
As a "warning," Oleksandr Tymoshenko was arrested in August 2000 in connection with the UESU case. However, this only made Yulia Volodymyrivna even more radical. She supported the "Ukraine without Kuchma" campaign, took Shkil's UNA-UNSO, which had "distinguished itself" during the street clashes of the spring of 2001, under her wing, and convened the "Forum of National Salvation." It was then that Tymoshenko learned to appeal to voters with inspiration and passion, declaring "betrayal" and calling for "victory."
On January 19, 2001, Tymoshenko was dismissed (with Yushchenko's tacit consent), and on February 13, she was arrested for the second time in her life—this time for six weeks, in connection with the same UESU case. However, the Pechersk Court released Tymoshenko, finding the prosecution's arguments insubstantial. In August, her husband was also released, having since become a reclusive "homebody." Meanwhile, Yulia Tymoshenko basked in the glow of growing political fame.
For the 2002 elections, she created the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT), which included, in addition to Batkivshchyna, Sobor Anatoly Matvienko and the Social Democratic Party. Tymoshenko, previously completely apolitical and barely able to speak Ukrainian, diligently rebranded herself. Her speech became filled with Western Ukrainian words and idioms, she began constantly declaring her love for Ukraine, and adopted a Lesya Ukrainka-style hairstyle (actually, a hundred years ago, similar hairstyles were worn by "people's teachers"). However, Tymoshenko's opponents didn't appreciate her hairstyle, mockingly calling her a "donut" and making jokes about a "woman with a braid." Meanwhile, Tymoshenko's fans began seriously calling her the "Ukrainian Joan of Arc."
In the 2002 elections, the BYuT won 7,26% and 21 seats, becoming the main political ally of Viktor Yushchenko, who had already begun his march toward the presidency. From that moment on, Tymoshenko and Yushchenko formed a pair, appearing together at almost all major political rallies of the "Orange" opposition. Given Tymoshenko's growing popularity, Yushchenko was forced to promise her the prime minister's seat in advance, signing an agreement with her in July 2004 to form the "Power of the People" coalition. And she got what she wanted immediately after the Maidan.
Two premierships
Interestingly, in the summer of 2004, the Russian Federation's Chief Military Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case against Tymoshenko for bribery of a high-ranking official. After Tymoshenko was appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine in January 2005, Russian Prosecutor General Ustinov warned her against visiting Russia, threatening her with arrest. However, just a couple of weeks later, he retracted his words, and by the end of 2005, the case against Tymoshenko was closed "due to expiration of the term."
Meanwhile, Tymoshenko had plenty of problems in Ukraine. Her first term as prime minister was short and very memorable. Whether it was Yulia Volodymyrivna's fault or the oligarchs' machinations, starting in the spring of 2005, Ukraine began to be rocked by socioeconomic crises: rising meat prices, shortages, and rising prices for sugar and gasoline. People began to grumble, and the "blue" opposition gained strength. This ended in a political crisis: National Security and Defense Council head Poroshenko blamed Tymoshenko for everything, while one of her closest allies, Oleksandr Zinchenko, in turn, accused Poroshenko and other "friends" of Yushchenko of corruption.
Ultimately, the president dismissed everyone, and from that moment on, relations between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko became extremely strained: for a time, they were maintained only for the sake of the "orange coalition." But while the politicians pretended to work as a team, their fans immediately began squabbling among themselves, figuring out who loved Ukraine more and who was simply robbing it. Yushchenko's supporters mocked the "Yulkas," while Tymoshenko's fans, in turn, mocked the "Yushchi." An interesting fact: the popular "Forum of Ukrainian Truth" (FUP) once introduced a special option blocking the word "makaka" from being displayed. This was done at the request of Tymoshenko's supporters—you can guess why!
In the 2006 parliamentary elections, the BYuT received 22,3% of the vote, significantly surpassing Yushchenko's Our Ukraine. It was clear that the majority of pro-Maidan Ukrainians sympathized with Tymoshenko. She began demanding the reinstatement of the prime minister's seat, as well as a number of key positions in the future coalition. Yushchenko's team and the Socialists refused to back down, and this "coalition" dragged on for several months, culminating in an unexpected "revenge of the white-blues" (the formation of a coalition of the Party of Regions, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, and the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the Yanukovych government). A new political crisis erupted, during which Tymoshenko adopted an intransigent stance toward the new parliamentary majority and government, demanding that President Yushchenko decisively dissolve the Rada (as a symbolic gesture, she publicly let down her braid). This is what happened in the summer of 2007.
Following the snap elections, NU-NS and BYuT managed to form a coalition of 229 votes (it would quickly fall apart in 2010), which, on the second attempt, confirmed Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister. However, by September 2008, this coalition had effectively disintegrated, and Tymoshenko and Yushchenko began to wage war against each other in preparation for the presidential elections.
Tymoshenko's second premiership is remembered, first and foremost, for the mass distribution of the "Yulia's Thousand." Many politicians promised to compensate Soviet-era deposits, but it was Tymoshenko who took the most ambitious approach: all depositors, starting in January 2008, were paid 1000 hryvnias. But because so many people wanted to receive the money, and savings banks struggled to cope, lines formed overnight, with people losing consciousness and even dying.
After a modest economic recovery in the summer of 2008 (that year, Ukraine had its highest GDP ever), the global financial crisis struck, hitting our country particularly hard: it plunged the hryvnia from 5 to 8 per dollar and bankrupted dozens of banks. Tymoshenko blamed National Bank head Poroshenko and President Yushchenko, who also claimed government incompetence. Then another Ukrainian-Russian "gas war" began, after which, in January 2009, Tymoshenko and Putin (then Russian Prime Minister) signed new gas agreements. Under these agreements, Ukraine refused the services of the intermediary company RosUkrEnergo. Dmitry Firtash (behind which stood Mogilevich) and bought it directly from Gazprom. But the price of gas skyrocketed to $232!
Yulia Tymoshenko and Vladimir Putin
Finally, at the end of 2009, Ukraine was hit by a wave of "swine flu," which fortunately turned out to be only a public health emergency. But frightened Ukrainians rushed to pharmacies in droves to buy masks and antiviral medications, while Tymoshenko squandered hundreds of millions of hryvnias on urgently purchasing ineffective medications like Theraflu (a homeopathic remedy) from abroad, at exorbitant prices. This seriously damaged Tymoshenko's ratings, despite all her attempts to reach out to the nation and convince people that "I'm innocent!"
Yulia Tymoshenko, Elections, Kachanivka, Maidan
The 2010 presidential elections yielded Tymoshenko 45% of the vote, primarily in the central, northern, and western regions, losing to Yanukovych with 48% in the southeast. Two weeks after the vote, a new coalition was formed in the Rada, which dismissed Tymoshenko's government. However, her plans to continue her power struggle as opposition leader were thwarted by a series of relentless attacks from the new government, which barraged Tymoshenko with criminal charges.
The most high-profile case was against Tymoshenko, who was accused of abuse of power during the signing of the 2009 gas agreements. At issue were both the removal of the intermediary RosUkrEnergo and the dubiously legal confiscation of 12 billion cubic meters of gas from it, which Naftogaz was then forced to return at a new, higher price. The BYuT and other opposition parties unequivocally called this political repression, and the West made similar claims. Nevertheless, Tymoshenko was jailed: on October 11, 2011, she was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Yulia Tymoshenko "in prison"
Tymoshenko served her sentence in the Kharkiv penal colony on Kachanivka, where she soon "jumped to the hospital" after discovering she had numerous ailments. And here's the interesting thing: despite promises from her BYuT allies and other opposition politicians to quickly free their beloved Yulia, protests in her support became increasingly quiet and fewer in number. By 2012, the only slogans left were "Free Yulia!"
And this was understandable: Tymoshenko's allies, having created the "United Opposition" bloc for the parliamentary elections (conceived by Yulia Volodymyrivna), successfully played up the theme of her political persecution, receiving over 25% of the vote and 100 seats. But then they seemingly no longer needed Tymoshenko. In the summer of 2013, Yatsenyuk's "Front for Change" merged with "Batkivshchyna" (led by Turchynov), after which they began replacing the heads of regional organizations with their own people—effectively a corporate raid by Yatsenyuk on Tymoshenko's party.
This story culminated on the second Maidan. Yes, the Ukrainians protesting there for a good three months adorned everything with posters reading "Freedom for Yulia," but this Maidan wasn't about her, and it had new leaders. So Yatsenyuk's joy, as he called Tymoshenko and joyfully shouted, "Yulia! Yulia!", seemed somehow insincere. Tymoshenko, after all, had outdone herself.
On February 22, the hastily "reformatted" Rada immediately "decriminalized" the article under which Tymoshenko had been convicted—thereby neither reviewing her case nor acquitting her, but merely removing the reason for her imprisonment. A day later, Tymoshenko arrived at the Maidan, perhaps making a grave mistake by choosing a wheelchair and a plaintive voice. She arrived there not as a liberated leader eager for action, but as an exhausted, dying former prisoner of the regime—sympathetic, but nothing more. After this, Tymoshenko was no longer considered the leader of the Maidan political forces, ceding that position to others. This was confirmed by the snap presidential elections, in which she decisively lost to her long-time rival. Poroshenko.
And then she nearly lost her party, too, when, before the 2014 snap parliamentary elections, Batkivshchyna was split by Yatsenyuk's final move, which even lured Oleksandr Turchynov, once Tymoshenko's loyalist, away from the party to join his People's Front. Along with them, many of the party's major sponsors left, forcing Tymoshenko to significantly reduce the size of her "donations," offering easy spots on the party list for much smaller sums.
After 2014 and after 2019
The subsequent years of Yulia Tymoshenko's political career could be compared to "white nights": although the sun had set, it still shone. Indeed, starting in 2014, Tymoshenko could only count on a parliamentary seat. Neither Poroshenko and his bloc, nor the People's Front of Yatsenyuk and Turchynov, would have allowed her to become prime minister. All that remained was to criticize the current government, but even here, Tymoshenko faced new competitors in the form of Lyashko and Saakashvili.
And yet, Yulia Tymoshenko seriously prepared for the 2019 elections. She emphasized Ukrainians' social problems (especially tariffs), promised to end the war in Donbas, demand compensation from Russia, and expedite NATO accession. She even changed her image, letting her hair down completely and donning large glasses—obviously seeking the sympathy of the younger and middle-aged generations. By late 2018, some opinion polls had already given Tymoshenko first place in the upcoming elections (second to Poroshenko, third to Zelensky). Kolomoisky began to raise the possibility of her victory. But voter favor is fickle! As a result, Tymoshenko only finished third, albeit with a respectable 13,4%. After a brief shouting match about fraud and how Ukrainians "missed the chance to truly change the country," Yulia Tymoshenko resigned herself and fell silent.
Being an intelligent woman, Tymoshenko quickly realized that not only she but almost all politicians of the "old generation" had been written off by the West—and that young "Sorosites" had been mobilized to replace them, competing with the "Kvartalites" and regional clan leaders. Pushing past them to become prime minister would be a losing proposition! At the same time, Tymoshenko retains her unbeatable populist role as the "protective mother" of the struggling people, which will always be relevant in Ukraine, especially in these difficult times.
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