Yulia Tymoshenko runs for president: Failure within reach?

(Baonghean) - In less than 2 months (May 25), the Ukrainian presidential election will take place. According to observers, there is no candidate who really stands out in the upcoming election, even the current acting president is not a promising candidate. Recently, "Gas Queen" Yulia Tymoshenko announced that she will run for president with a very "eloquent" statement. However, in the context of the country being in crisis and no longer having many supporters, an imminent failure is very clear for this woman who has long had anti-Russian thoughts...

Ms. Tymoshenko was born in 1960 in the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine, where the majority of the population speaks Russian. In the 1990s, Ms. Tymoshenko ran the United Energy Systems of Ukraine and was known as the “gas queen” since then. Successful in business, she entered the political field and achieved certain successes. During the period of 1999 - 2001, Ms. Tymoshenko was Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine in charge of the energy sector. In the presidential election in 2004, although she was a strong candidate, she ultimately failed, the winner was none other than the president who had just been deposed in February.

Not accepting the truth, “Gas Queen” Tymoshenko and Mr. Viktor Yushchenko (also running in this election) believed that there were irregularities in the election and the results were not what voters wanted. Therefore, Ms. Tymoshenko and her ally Viktor Yushchenko organized massive street protests called “Orange Revolution” in late November 2004 - January 2005 to protest the election results. Under the enormous pressure of the protesters, the Supreme Court of Ukraine was forced to declare there was election fraud, Mr. Viktor Yushchenko took office as President and Ms. Tymoshenko became Prime Minister of Ukraine. But after that, the relationship between her and her ally Yushchenko broke down. In 2010, Ms. Tymoshenko ran for President of Ukraine, but lost to Mr. Viktor Yanukovych with only 45.73% of the votes.

This failure also marked the failure of the “Orange Revolution” supported by the US and the West. Although she did not acknowledge the election results and declared that there was fraud, as a smart woman, she realized that no matter how hard she tried, she could not change the situation. She withdrew and declared, “It is clear that the court is not determined to prove the truth.” The hardships in her life were not over for her. In 2011, Tymoshenko had to stand trial on charges related to abuse of power for personal gain and was sentenced to 7 years in prison for this crime. February 22 marked the return of the woman who was ranked third in the “List of 100 most powerful women in the world” by Forbes magazine. That was when she was released early after the Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych. Immediately after that, Tymoshenko made an extremely excited speech before the crowd of protesters at Independence Square, the capital Kiev: "You have changed the country, not politicians, not diplomats, not the world - only you", she also called this crowd heroes...

Yulia Tymoshenko addresses protesters on the day of her release from prison.

On March 27, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko announced that she would run for president at the end of May with very "eloquent" statements: "I want to hold the presidency because I am the only one who can show how to end corruption in all areas. I will run in the upcoming presidential election" and "None of the politicians running for election deeply understands the lawlessness in Ukraine and no one wants to end it as recklessly as I do"... In addition, she also pledged to return Crimea to Ukraine despite the fact that this autonomous country has been an inseparable part of the Russian Federation and that is their legitimate wish (even major allies like the US have acknowledged this).

The rapid and unpredictable developments in Ukraine have pushed the relationship between the great powers into the most tense confrontation since the Cold War, between the West and the US on one side, and Russia on the other. Everyone knows that this is a very good opportunity for this woman with anti-Russian ideology to return to politics. However, after a tape recording of her conversation with Ukrainian parliamentarian, former government official Nestor Shufrych, with a contemptuous attitude, "wipe out the damned "katsap" with a gun and their leader". "Katsap" is a derogatory word used to refer to Russians in Ukraine and "their leader" is none other than President Putin. I wonder what she was thinking when she made such statements before the election? While in Ukraine there are many Russian speakers, they always consider themselves Russian citizens, especially in the East and South. Many people think that such provocative statements are only for the purpose of "flattering" the West and the US. However, she herself did not expect that this was the biggest mistake in her election campaign, even her German allies thought that the above statement was inappropriate and provocative.

With less than two months to go until the presidential election, she hopes to win votes in the western region, but there she will also face fierce competition between chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko and “Doctor of Steel Hammer” Vitali Klitschko. In a recent poll, she received only 8.2% of the support, far behind her two rivals. Like previous times, many believe that this time, failure is also “within reach” for the ambitious woman Yulia Tymoshenko.

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