Yulia Tymoshenko life and biography

<>Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko (born November 27, 1960) is a Ukrainian politician.

Tymoshenko was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from January 24 to September 8, 2005, and again from December 18, 2007 to March 4, 2010 when she was dismissed from the post by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament. She is the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

She has been a practising economist and academic. Prior to her political career, Yulia Tymoshenko was a successful but controversial businesswoman in the gas industry, becoming by some estimates one of the richest people in the country. Before becoming Ukraine's first female Prime Minister in 2005, Tymoshenko co-led the Orange Revolution.

Tymoshenko was a candidate in the Ukraine presidential elections of 2010. During the first round of voting, Tymoshenko gained approximately 25% of the votes, which put her in second place, behind Viktor Yanukovych. The two candidates progressed to a runoff election, which Yanukovych won (Tymoshenko gained 45.47% of the votes this time). Tymoshenko did challenge the election results and has stated that the vote was rigged with more than 1 million votes that were falsified or miscounted. On February 17, Administrative Court of Ukraine suspended the results of the election on her appeal. The court suspended the Central Election Commission of Ukraine ruling that announced that Viktor Yanukovych won the election. Tymoshenko withdrew her appeal on February 20, 2010. On March 3, 2010 the Ukrainian Parliament passed a motion of no confidence in the second Tymoshenko Government that led to the fall of the cabinet.

Tymoshenko wants her country to become a member of EU while concerned about antagonizing Russia. "I try to defend our interests so that we can find a balance in our relations both with the EU and Russia". Tymoshenko supports Ukraine joining NATO stating it would be "uncomfortable" for Ukraine to remain "in a void, outside all existing security systems". But, according to Tymoshenko, the question of Ukraine’s joining any system of collective security would "be resolved only by referendum." Tymoshenko is in favour of close relations with the EU, including the creation of a free trade area between Ukraine and EU and later a full membership, preferably in 2015. According to Tymoshenko: "The European project has not been completed as yet. It has not been completed because there is no full-fledged participation of Ukraine." She's against foreign intervention in internal Ukrainian affairs: "Ukraine's realization of its sovereign rights, forming a modern political nation, cannot be considered as a policy aimed against anyone". Tymoshenko does not want to expand the lease contract of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Ukraine because "The Constitution of Ukraine quite clearly stipulates that foreign military bases cannot be deployed in Ukraine, and this constitutional clause is the fundamental basis of the state's security".

Tymoshenko opposes the introduction of Russian as a second official state language, and she does not believe the rights of Russian speakers are violated in current Ukraine.

The first Tymoshenko Government planned to renationalise 3,000 firms but the cabinet was sacked before those plans could materialise. Tymoshenko believes that Ukraine's economy is excessively monopolized. Some Ukrainian politicians and academics have described her politically as a state socialist. Tymoshenko is against privatization of the gas transportation system in Ukraine. Tymoshenko lists the recovery of the economy of Ukraine during the 2008–2009 Ukrainian financial crisis as one of her achievements. The second Tymoshenko Government has spend 1.6 billion hryvnya on updating coal mines.

Tymoshenko wants to increase a rise in the general level of social standards by equalizing salaries in the industrial and social spheres and pledged in November 2009 to revamp Ukraine's hospitals and health system within two years and tax breaks for farmers. Other economical policies included compensation for depositors who lost Soviet-era savings, price controls on food and medicines to bring inflation down, calls for a review of murky privatisations and high social spending. Tymoshenko wants to cut the number of taxes by a third, simplifying the system and wants to cut Value Added Tax (VAT) and offer tax breaks to importers of new technologies as well as poor regions to boost investment.

Tymoshenko believes Ukraine could gain energy security through the development and construction of more nuclear power stations and she wants to speed up exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas on the Black Sea shelf.

Tymoshenko wants to reform the forming of state executive bodies and favours giving parliamentary opposition "real instruments of influence on the authorities", wants Ukrainian court system reforms and wants to re-transfer executive power to local authorities. Tymoshenko want Ukrainians "to live in a dictatorship of the constitution and the law". In November 2009 Tymoshenko called Ukraine "an absolutely ungovernable country" due to the changes to the Constitution of Ukraine as a part of a political compromise between the acting authorities (former-President Kuchma) and opposition during the Orange Revolution (Tymoshenko has argued those reform were "incomplete" and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc voted against them in December 2004). In December 2009 the second Tymoshenko Government proposed creating independent anti-corruption bureaus in Ukraine.

In January 2010 Tymoshenko called for urgent amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine via the majority of the Verkhovna Rada after a survey or plebiscite is conducted.

Family and personal life

Yulia Tymoshenko is married to Oleksandr Tymoshenko, a businessman. During the early years of her political career, the two were parted for years when Mr. Tymoshenko was escaping arrest. The couple rarely appear together in public. They have a daughter Eugenia (born in 1980).

During a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe she stated that, like most Soviet citizens, she spoke only Russian in her childhood and only learned Ukrainian when she became a member of the government of Viktor Yushchenko in 2000.

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