The husband of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been granted asylum in the Czech Republic, a week after his wife was transferred to a penal colony to serve a seven-year sentence.
Yulia Tymoshenko, 51, was convicted in October of abuse of office for signing an allegedly disadvantageous gas deal with Russia in 2009. She lost an appeal last month. Critics say the prosecution was politically motivated and probably ordered by her rival, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who denies that accusation.
The Czech interior ministry confirmed on Friday it had approved the application for asylum submitted by Tymoshenko’s partner, Oleksandr, a businessman.
Batkivshchina, the political party led by Tymoshenko, issued a statement on Thursday saying: “This step by Oleksander Tymoshenko is the response to amoral attempts to torture and put pressure on Yulia Tymoshenko by persecuting her relatives and people close to her.”
Natasha Lysova, Tymoshenko’s spokeswoman, told the Guardian by telephone from Kiev that the politician’s husband had not suffered direct persecution, but he feared authorities might harass him to silence his wife.
“Anything is possible with this regime,” Lysova said. “Their illegal terror campaign against Yulia Tymoshenko is a deliberate attempt to destroy her as Yanukovych’s main political opponent at elections.”
Ukraine will hold a parliamentary vote in October and a presidential poll in 2015.
Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which saw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators take to the streets of Kiev in protest at a rigged presidential election. Yanukovych lost the rerun to Tymoshenko’s ally, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, but he preserved solid support in the Russian-speaking east of the country. He then capitalized on divisions in the orange camp to seize the presidency in 2010, although Tymoshenko came a narrow second.
The US and EU called the Tymoshenko trial an example of “selective justice” and the EU has stalled on a political association and free trade agreement with Ukraine over the case.
Yulia Tymoshenko was transferred from a detention center in Kiev to the Kachaniv women’s prison colony in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, on Dec. 30.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion