Tom Parfitt
Thursday February 2, 2006
The Guardian

Yulia Timoshenko was the heroine of Ukraine's orange revolution and went on to become the country's prime minister. Then it all went wrong when her former ally, President Viktor Yushchenko, abruptly fired her. But it's not over yet, she tells Tom Parfitt

Their heads tilted so close together that they brush at the temple, the couple seem a picture of harmony and understanding. His face is strangely pockmarked, hers drawn yet beautiful, but both are smiling with quiet contentment. The iconic image of Ukraine's opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, and his ally, Yulia Timoshenko, on stage in Kiev appeared in newspapers across the world. It is a reminder of happier times: the orange revolution last winter that propelled Yushchenko to the presidency.

A rigged presidential election had sparked a popular uprising that quickly saw the capital's Independence Square crammed with chanting protesters. For more than a month, international attention was locked on Ukraine and on the "dream team" of Yushchenko and Timoshenko, who promised a sparkling future out of the clutches of a corrupt, Soviet-style regime.

Yushchenko, the shy but respected former banker whose face was crumpled by an alleged poisoning attempt, provided the gravitas. Timoshenko was the glamorous firebrand who loosed off tirades of rhetoric and called her supporters to the barricades. For the protesters who camped out in sub-zero temperatures she was a Joan of Arc, a talisman who made the sacrifice worthwhile. And in the end, the fairy-tale came true. The arch-villain of the piece, pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, was ushered from the stage and Yushchenko took the presidency. Within weeks he named his spirited sidekick as prime minister.

Then the trouble began. The economy began to nosedive and rifts opened between the orange leaders. "From the very first moment that the president came to power, people from his closest circle made an enemy figure out of me," claims Timoshenko, in an interview at her party headquarters in central Kiev. When she was sacked as premier with the rest of her cabinet last September, after a welter of corruption allegations between Yushchenko's aides and ministers spilled into the open, she turned on her former ally, accusing him of "ruining our unity, our future, the future of our country".

Petite and startlingly good-looking, the 45-year-old former businesswoman retains her fearsome reputation – her latest moniker in the Ukrainian press is "the samurai in a skirt". Approaching the end of a 16-hour working day, she is dressed in an immaculate pinstripe trouser suit and a pleated white blouse. She speaks with a silky intensity that seems to embody her sense of righteous indignation. "I was not fired for some kind of action that was ineffective in my role as head of the government, but to close off the subject of this shameful corruption within the president's circle," she says.

Since her dismissal she has kept up a constant stream of criticism of Yushchenko, calling Kiev's recent deal with Moscow over the gas crisis "a complete betrayal and a secret pact for the personal enrichment of people in Ukraine's highest offices". She is now focused on next month's parliamentary elections, when she hopes to garner enough support to seize back the premiership. She arrives in London today to pitch her vision for reform and European integration in a speech at Chatham House.

In Ukraine, the split between the orange leaders has led to widespread disillusionment with their vows to throw off the corrupt old ways that thrived under former president Leonid Kuchma. "Yushchenko came off very badly because people see him and Timoshenko as a quarrelling couple and they think he, as the man, should be patching things up," says Denys Bohush, a former campaign spin doctor for Yushchenko.

Timoshenko says the break-up was "a great mistake" and the "biggest moral trauma of my life", but is convinced the ideals of the orange revolution can still be salvaged. "My political aim, in fact, is very simple – I would like to work a miracle and realise what was promised at the time of Yushchenko's election. I want Ukraine to stop being a country of clans, I want terribly that one day honest courts will be born here, and all other things that are a sign of a normal society, a normal government."

She does not rule out a reconciliation with Yushchenko, but insists he must first shed the oligarchs and advisers who she claims have manipulated him and ensured his "complete disorientation".

"All the time a feeling was being stirred up in the president that I was his main competitor in political life," she says. "But that was not true. We complemented each other politically ... Our efforts were so harmoniously shared out that we could have worked as a team for decades, without being competitors. Unfortunately, that did not figure in the plans of those people who saw Ukraine as a closed business for the creation of their own shadow profits, for the creation of a powerful system to earn money."

The bubble exploded only seven months after her appointment when the then presidential chief of staff, Alexander Zinchenko, accused Petro Poroshenko, a confectionery magnate who became the head of the national security and defence council, and another senior aide, of nepotism – charges that were furiously denied. Yushchenko responded quickly by sacking the government and appointing a caretaker prime minister, accusing separate factions of "playing their own games behind closed doors".

"Many new faces have come to power, but the face of power has not changed," Yushchenko famously added, grumbling that Timoshenko had concentrated on self-aggrandisement and hinting that her zeal for reprivatising former state assets concealed a desire to benefit associates in the business world. She denies mismanagement of the economy. "I am very sad that I lost the war for the opinion of the president," she says, her sense of betrayal underlined by a near-messianic fervour to regain her place at the top table of Ukrainian politics. Asked whether she is hurt by attempts to discredit her, she replies: "Well, Christ was crucified. As a normal, earthly person, if you want to reach the end of a difficult road then you can only do it by going though ordeals that seem insurmountable."

(published abridged after InoPressa)