Yulia Tymoshenko may have sustained the most shattering defeat of her political life but it is unlikely Ukraine has seen the last of its charismatic “Iron Lady” with an unquenchable thirst for power.
Tymoshenko’s rise through the energy industry to the posts of deputy prime minister and prime minister had all been heading towards her bid to win the presidency in Sunday’s elections.
Despite mounting a canny campaign that saw her styled variously as simply “She” or even “Tigriulia,” the prime minister lost out to her old rival Viktor Yanukovych by a margin of over three percent.
PHOTO: EPA
However, even in opposition, it is probable she will once again be a formidable foe for Yanukovych.
“It’s a great defeat. She has prepared for this election throughout all her political life. The majority of her supporters had no doubt that she was going to win,” said prominent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky.
“It’s painful, but not the end of her political career,” he said.
Even if Tymoshenko’s challenge to the results dissolves, she may be able to exact considerable revenge on Yanukovych as a feisty leader of the opposition.
His Regions Party does not have a majority in the lower house, the Verkhovna Rada, and will need to rely on smaller parties and renegade ex-Tymoshenko supporters to push legislation through.
Political analyst Mykhailo Pogrebinski, seen as close to Yanukovych, acknowledged that “Tymoshenko is the No. 2 leader in this country and that is an undeniable fact.”
“It will be necessary to find a solution to put an end to the confrontation,” he said.
The bruising defeat was another chapter in the rollercoaster career of a woman in which she has spent time in prison and fallen out with a succession of once-close male allies.
Tymoshenko, 49, has traditionally been seen as pro-Western, compared with the more pro-Russian tilt of Yanukovych. In May 2007, she published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine denouncing Moscow’s “imperial ambitions.”
But she has repeatedly shown a capacity to change her political skin and in the last two years has sought to position herself as being on good terms with Moscow, especially Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Born in Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine, Tymoshenko won prominence and allegedly huge wealth in the chaotic 1990s as head of United Energy Systems of Ukraine, which imported Russian gas.
One of her mentors from that era was former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who helped her build up the business and is now jailed in the US for embezzlement and money laundering.
Tymoshenko became a deputy prime minister under the presidency of Leonid Kuchma in 1999 but was then fired in 2001 after falling out with him.
In a dramatic sequence of events, she was then briefly imprisoned on charges of forgery and gas smuggling. The charges, which she says were politically motivated, were quashed in 2005 amid mysterious circumstances.
Her businessman husband Olexander, whom she married as a teenager, was implicated in the same scandal and spent one year in jail and then two more years in hiding from the authorities.
Tymoshenko was the chief ally of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in the 2004 Orange Revolution that swept the old pro-Kuchma order from power and has served twice as prime minister under Yushchenko’s presidency.
But the pair’s relationship descended into sometimes comical bickering as the two former Orange heroes developed an implacable enmity.
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