International
Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters
Polarizing ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko formally announced her candidacy for president of Ukraine on Thursday, confirming a flurry of rumors and reports that have persisted ever since she was released from jail and her political foe, former pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovich, was deposed by a months-long uprising.
Tymoshenko, who was jailed in 2011 on corruption charges thought by many to have been politically-motivated, has appeared at rallies in Kiev’s Independence Square and previously danced around questions about her intentions to run in a May election. But on Thursday, she put the speculation to bed and formally declared her intention to unite a Ukraine that is increasingly split along its east-west fault line.
"I will be the candidate of Ukrainian unity," Tymoshenko told reporters. "The west and center of Ukraine has always voted for me, but I was born in the east, in Dnipropetrovsk."
Her improbable ascent to the forefront of public life marks the return of one of the most divisive figures in Ukraine's political scene. The two-time former prime minister is variously admired as an icon of democracy and reviled as a self-promoting manipulator.
Though analyasts say the odds are stacked against her, Tymoshenko is still the best known of an array of new candidates in a race left wide open by Ukraine's political upheaval, including former heavyweight boxer Vitaliy Klitschko and a number of politicians who have their political base in the Russian-speaking eastern provinces won by Yanukovich last election. A poll jointly released on Wednesday by four political research firms had Tymoshenko trailing in third place, behind chocolate baron Petro Poroshenko and Klitschko.
Tymoshenko’s candidacy pends the approval of her center-right Fatherland Party, of which she is the leader, to be determined in a meeting on Saturday.
It will be the second time that Tymoshenko, 53, seeks the position of president after being narrowly defeated by Yanukovich in a run-off vote in 2010. Yanukovich subsequently launched a campaign against Tymoshenko and her allies that culminated in a seven-year prison sentence for abuse of office charges tied to an energy deal she brokered with Russia as prime minister in 2009.
But when Yanukovich fled to Russia on Feb. 20 and Ukraine’s pro-European opposition assumed interim control of the country, Tymoshenko was released five years early.
Resigned to a wheelchair due to recurrent back problems but still styling her familiar peasant hair-braid, Tymoshenko delivered a passionate speech before opposition protesters in Independence Square just hours after her release. She was welcomed back to Ukraine’s public sphere with warm applause, though many sensed already that post-revolution Ukraine would be wary of the country’s old guard.
Her early message of “Ukrainian unity” figures to be a fixture on the campaign trail, as Ukraine appears increasingly divided by its largely pro-European west and Russian-facing east. Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian peninsula in the Black Sea, has spurred fears of further Russian incursion – whether through invasion or political engineering. Protests between supporters and opponents of the uprising in Kiev have sometimes become violent.
“I will be able to find a common language with everyone who lives in the east,” she said on Thursday.
But Tymoshenko also made overtures to voters who would be skeptical of her in light of the corruption allegations. She has sought to spin her past experience in the energy sector as an asset for stamping out corruption. “I stand out from all the other presidential candidates because I will actually be able to do this: I will be able to break up these huge clan-like corporations.”
Tymoshenko also noted that it would be essential to secure voters’ trust after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004, which vaulted her to national prominence but soon collapsed in on itself and opened the door for Yanukovich to regain the presidency.
"I will do everything to ensure that our second European revolution does not lead to distrust, depression and disappointment," she said. "I will everyday work to earn the trust that is afforded to me by the people."
With The Associated Press
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