Юлия Тимошенко

[InsaneApache]

Dodgy. Very dodgy.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/1...79A0UK20111011

[Furunculus]

indeed, i need to be.............. dominated!

i have been a very bad boy.

[Papewaio]

I have to say that if both the EU and Russia are in agreement then there is two probable reasons:

a) The Ukraine judges really do not have independence of the political process. That this is a politically motivated ploy.

b) This is what it is and that the EU would be happy to screw over an impoverished nation for access to gas.

So which is it? Or is it c) all of the above?

[Sarmatian]

Yanukovich is supposed to be closer to Moscow so I find this really interesting, so I believe it's more a). Yanukovich used the deal to get rid of a dangerous political opponents.

[Nowake]

a) The Ukraine judges really do not have independence of the political process. That this is a politically motivated ploy.

This. The ex-Soviet space knows no independent judicial power and this is not a generalisation. Even events that could be deemed as victories for democracy are orchestrated by pressure groups.

[Husar]

She's almost cuter than her own daughter so it's unbelievable that the judge could honestly sentence her to seven years without a lot of pressure!

Visual bias aside, the way the press describes it here, Yanukovich likes foul play instead of winning by democratic means and throwing politicians in jail for decisions that are "wrong" in hindsight would only make politicians try to avoid any and all decisions in the future.
The EU would financially have to back Yanukovich, after all Tymoshenko was blamed of negotiating gas prices with Russia that are too high(the way I understand this, the gas goes Russia -> Ukraine -> EU so if they negotiate lower prices, we should get it cheaper as well, or am I mistaken?). Which also makes Russia's opposition seem genuine to me as they would surely support the politician who negotiated the higher gas prices with them. Even though the whole gas price thing seems more like a fake reason to get her in jail anyway.

That said, it's funny how Yanukovich managed to make both the EU and Russia angry and if I understood the radio commentator at work correctly, then he is already talking about her eventually being freed in a rerun of the trial, probably attempting to fix the mess he got himself into with that.

[Sarmatian]

The EU would financially have to back Yanukovich, after all Tymoshenko was blamed of negotiating gas prices with Russia that are too high(the way I understand this, the gas goes Russia -> Ukraine -> EU so if they negotiate lower prices, we should get it cheaper as well, or am I mistaken?)

Nope. Russia sells it's gas directly to EU and Ukraine gets a transit fee. Ukraine pays only for the gas it uses not the gas that is in transit and pays a cheaper price than EU for it. The deal is that before the whole incident with gas syphoning, Ukraine paid a lot less than market value and after it (the deal Tymoshenko signed) Ukraine pays somewhat less.