Posted on 10/11/2011 6:06:13 PM PDT by Kaslin
Freedom: A Ukraine court's decision Tuesday to imprison Orange Revolution heroine and former Premier Yulia Tymoshenko on bogus charges over a gas deal she made with Russia is a travesty. Now only Russia can benefit.
Ukraine's internal politics reared its ugly head again when Judge Radion Kireyev found Tymoshenko "guilty" of exceeding her authority as prime minister over a gas deal she signed with Russia in 2009 and sentenced her to seven years' prison. Her crime? That she didn't get a low enough price for the gas Ukraine buys from the barons of Moscow — who hold a monopoly on supply.
Ukraine, remember, is a critical pipeline route for Russian natural gas supplies to Europe — and as a result has been in the middle of a strategic tug of war over tilting toward democratic Europe or oligarchical Moscow.
Past payment disputes have been severe enough to shut energy supplies and leave Europe freezing. So the fact that then-Prime Minister Tymoshenko got any sort of price at all from the Russians was a legitimate act of a head of state, not a crime.
But that wasn't good enough for her political enemies.
Moscow-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych and his Western-leaning rival, Viktor Yushchenko (whose face was left scarred years ago when Moscow tried to poison him), teamed up to railroad Tymoshenko. They used still-on-the-books Soviet-era laws to charge her with "costing" Ukraine $190 million for her deal. What they really wanted was to get rid of a political foe as elections approach
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Ukraine ought to be ashamed
Ukraine hates Russia bitterly for good reason, they got raped every which way and sideways. It doesn’t sell well to the average Ukrainian Joe to see Russia get what looks like a sweet deal.
Still it doesn’t seem the past PM did anything that was illegal in Ukraine. If they had wanted the legislature, say, in the loop they should have provided for that through legislation, a constitutional amendment, whatever.
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