www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Tymoshenko's Sentence

In light of the recent EU tangent, I wonder what people's opinions are of Tymoshenko's arrest and sentence - especially considering that when she was seen as one symbol of democratic hope in Ukraine, what that often meant was 'Ukraine's ticket into the various Western political and military alliances (NATO, EU, etc.).

See, for example, this article in the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204002304576626582279585912.html

Tymoshenko really has no one to blame for this but herself. While her trial was a sham, it could only have taken place under the government of Yanukovich, and Yanukovich is only the President of Ukraine because Tymoshenko and Yushchenko were incapable of placing the interests Ukraine above their own political ambitions and mutual loathing, thus handing the election to Yanukovich and frittering away the fruits of the Orange Revolution.

The critical question now is whether the people's disgust with Tymoshenko is greater than their loathing of Yanukovich's blatant abuses of power, and will they take to the streets in protest. My guess is no.

@StuartK

I agree with your points about Tymoshenko, howevermuch I wish they were not true (I had had so many hopes for Yushchenko and Tymoshenko's alliance back in the day). Then again, I realise that many of my reasons for having felt positively disposed towards the two of them are closely aligned with those of such bodies as the EU.

Certainly, I cannot now help but wonder if there isn't something to the idea that their failure was actually a positive thing insofar as it gives Ukraine the chance to re-assess its pro-Western assumptions (where 'Western' means what I described it as in my first post).

Actually, the Russians have managed to do what I thought impossible: make Yanukovich into a Ukrainian nationalist. Overplaying their hand in a ham-fisted manner over a range of issues including gas prices, border lines, and the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sebastopol, the Russians have actually moved Ukrainian popular opinion--and Yanukovich's public statements--closer to NATO membership.

The Russian invasion of Georgia did not help matters any--it actually galvanized public opinion about Russia from the Baltic States and Finland all the way down to Romania. All of those countries revised their defense modernization plans, retaining far more tanks, aircraft and artillery than they had anticipated in order to meet the perceived Russian threat.

As for EU membership, at this point, isn't that like trying to buy a ticket for the Titanic after it hit the iceberg?

True, but you can get quite the discount, they say!

The band is also pretty good.