Polish president must support Tymoshenko against 'Ukraine dictatorship'

Yulia Tymoshenko: photo - wikicommons

“We call on the democratic world to put pressure on the Ukrainian regime, because what is happening in Ukraine now is a dictatorship,” the daughter of Yulia Tymoshenko said at a meeting with Polish journalists in Brussels, Monday.

“Of course, we look forward to the support of the Polish government and Polish leaders,” she added, ahead of an appeal in the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg against the ruling last week by a three-judge panel at the Ukrainian high specialised court for civil and criminal cases, which rejected Yulia Tymoshenko's appeal against a conviction for abuse of office in 2009 when she signed an energy deal with Russia.

Tymoshenko is serving a seven year jail term for abuse of office after a court ruled she had no power to sign the deal which, it said, resulted in the loss of millions of dollars to the Ukrainian state.

Eugenia Tymoshenko, accompanied by deputy head of the opposition Motherland party, Hryhoriy Nemyria, are in Brussels at the invitation of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) bloc in the European Parliament.

Tymoshenko's party, and a united opposition, will be standing against the ruling Party of the Regions in a general election at the end of October and Hryhoriy Nemyria said that Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski will be the only politician from an EU country visiting the country before the ballot.

“The last time I met President Komorowski, on 1 July for the final of Euro 2012 in Kiev, he told me that when he comes again, he will visit Yulia Tymoshenko in Kharkov, if she was will still be in prison. We believe that this promise will be kept,” Nemyria told journalists, yesterday.

"It's a challenge for Komorowski […] whether he wants to be seen as a politician in solidarity with Ukraine and its pro-European society, or as a politician in solidarity with a regime that violates human rights,” he added. (pg)