Epress.am News from Armenia
Yulia V. Tymoshenko, once one of Ukraine’s most powerful and popular politicians, was sentenced on Tuesday to seven years in prison, the culmination of a politically charged trial that could presage the end of the country’s short and often raucous experiment with democracy, The New York Times reports.
The sentence was the maximum demanded by prosecutors on charges that Tymoshenko had harmed Ukraine’s interests when, as prime minister, she carried out negotiations with Russia in 2009 over the price of natural gas. Her supporters and many Western officials have insisted that her actions could hardly have amounted to a crime.
The ruling will likely put a freeze on Ukraine’s integration with Western Europe, which the country’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, has pursued even as he has flirted with the iron-fisted ruling style practiced in Moscow.
“This is an authoritarian regime that is distancing Ukraine from Europe, while using European rhetoric,” Tymoshenko said in the courtroom. Yanukovich, she said, “is bringing Ukraine back to 1937,” the height of the Stalinist purges.
Riot police stood outside the Kiev Pechersk court as thousands of supporters and opponents gathered. There have been minor clashes and some arrests.
