Wikipedia Deep Dive

Yulia Tymoshenko

12 min read

She broke prison windows on live television.

That single image captures something essential about Yulia Tymoshenko—a woman who has cycled through roles as gas industry tycoon, revolutionary icon, twice-serving prime minister, political prisoner, and perennial presidential contender. In a country where politics has often meant the difference between prosperity and poverty, freedom and prison, even life and death, Tymoshenko has somehow managed to survive them all.

From Soviet Engineer to Gas Princess

Tymoshenko was born Yulia Hrihyan in 1960 in Dnipropetrovsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine that was then part of the Soviet Union. Her father abandoned the family when she was barely a toddler, and she grew up using her mother's surname. Her paternal grandfather, Abram Kapitelman, had been killed fighting in what the Soviets called the Great Patriotic War—what the rest of the world knows as World War Two—dying as a lieutenant in the Signal Corps in November 1944.

The young Yulia proved academically gifted. She started in mining engineering before transferring to economics, graduating with top honors in 1984 as what the Soviet system called an "engineer-economist." For the next four years, she worked at a missile factory—one of those massive Soviet industrial enterprises that sprawled across Ukrainian cities.

Then came perestroika.

Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the late 1980s cracked open the rigid Soviet economy just enough for entrepreneurial types to squeeze through. In 1988, Yulia and her husband Oleksandr borrowed five thousand rubles—roughly equivalent to a year's average salary at the time—and opened a video rental cooperative. The business worked, possibly helped along by her father-in-law's position running the regional film distribution network.

But video rentals were small potatoes compared to what came next.

The Gas Business

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine suddenly found itself an independent nation with massive energy needs and no domestic supply to meet them. The country depended almost entirely on natural gas piped in from Russia. Whoever controlled the import of that gas controlled the lifeblood of Ukrainian industry.

Tymoshenko and her partners founded the Ukrainian Petrol Corporation in 1991, initially supplying fuel to agriculture. By 1995, this had transformed into United Energy Systems of Ukraine, and Tymoshenko became its president. The company grew into the dominant middleman for Russian gas imports. During these years, she earned the nickname that would follow her into politics: the "gas princess."

The gas business in post-Soviet Ukraine was not for the faint of heart. Billion-dollar debts, murky ownership structures, and allegations of corruption swirled through the industry. Tymoshenko was accused of paying kickbacks to Pavlo Lazarenko, a powerful politician who would later flee to the United States to avoid embezzlement charges. An American judge dismissed the specific allegations against her companies in 2004, but the association with the chaotic privatization era would shadow her political career.

By her own account, Tymoshenko solved genuine economic problems during her time in the gas industry. Ukraine's multi-billion dollar debt to Russia for natural gas was paid off. Machine building exports doubled. But whether she was a reformer cleaning up a corrupt system or simply one of its more successful players depends very much on who you ask.

By the mid-1990s, she was considered one of the richest people in Ukraine.

Into the Parliament

In 1996, Tymoshenko won a seat in the Verkhovna Rada—Ukraine's parliament—with an almost comically lopsided 92.3 percent of the vote in her district. She initially aligned with centrist forces supporting President Leonid Kuchma. But that alliance wouldn't last.

Within a year, she was calling for Kuchma's impeachment.

Ukrainian politics in this era operated through loose parliamentary factions rather than disciplined Western-style parties. When Tymoshenko's faction leader Lazarenko fled to America in 1999, she broke away and founded her own political vehicle: the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland," known in Ukrainian as Batkivshchyna. The party name itself was a statement—a claim to represent the authentic interests of the Ukrainian nation against what she characterized as a corrupt ruling elite.

That same year, the new Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko appointed her as Deputy Prime Minister for the fuel and energy sector. Her expertise in gas was finally being put to official use. Under her watch, revenue collections from the electricity industry increased by several thousand percent. She abolished the barter system that had let industrial customers avoid actually paying for power. She ended exemptions that protected well-connected organizations from having their electricity shut off when they didn't pay their bills.

These reforms had real consequences. The government suddenly had money to pay civil servants and raise salaries. Eighteen billion hryvnia became available for social payments—half of it collected simply by ending the shadow schemes and barter arrangements that had drained state revenues.

She was making powerful enemies.

Arrest and the Birth of an Icon

In August 2000, her husband was arrested. Tymoshenko claimed it was political retaliation for her reforms. In January 2001, President Kuchma fired her. Prime Minister Yushchenko, her supposed ally, accepted her dismissal without protest. Ukrainian media would later call this "the first betrayal of Viktor Yushchenko"—a phrase that hints at betrayals yet to come.

Tymoshenko didn't retreat. She took leadership of the National Salvation Committee and threw herself into street protests demanding Ukraine without Kuchma. The movement gathered together opposition parties ranging from republicans to social democrats to Christian democrats.

Then, in February 2001, she was arrested herself.

The charges accused her of forging customs documents and smuggling gas back in 1997. Her supporters organized rallies outside the Lukyanivska Prison where she was held. From her cell, she wrote to the Financial Times:

I believe that Mr Kuchma's regime may go so far as to eliminate me physically, not just politically, but I have made my choice and will continue to fight him by democratic methods. President Kuchma says I have committed a crime. My only "crime" has been to fight the corruption, shadow economy and totalitarianism that have been created by this president of Ukraine.

A month later, a district court found the charges groundless and released her. The case dragged on through various courts until 2005, when all charges were finally declared groundless. But Russia maintained its own arrest warrant, a legal sword hanging over her head that would limit her ability to negotiate directly with Moscow for years.

Her husband spent two years in hiding to avoid what the couple called politically motivated incarceration.

It was during this period of persecution and street protests that Tymoshenko transformed from a wealthy businesswoman-turned-politician into something more mythic. The image of her smashing prison windows during a rally, broadcast on national television, crystallized a new public persona: the fearless revolutionary willing to risk everything.

The Orange Revolution

By 2004, the stage was set for a showdown. Kuchma's hand-picked successor, Viktor Yanukovych—the Prime Minister—faced off against Viktor Yushchenko in the presidential election. Tymoshenko had decided not to run herself, instead throwing her support behind Yushchenko and his Our Ukraine movement. Together with the Socialist Party, they formed a coalition called the Force of the People.

The November 2004 runoff election was blatantly rigged. Exit polls showed Yushchenko winning, but official results gave the victory to Yanukovych. International observers documented systematic fraud.

What followed would be called the Orange Revolution, named for the campaign color of Yushchenko's movement. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flooded into central Kyiv, occupying Independence Square—the Maidan—in freezing temperatures. They stayed for weeks. Tymoshenko, with her distinctive braided crown hairstyle, became one of the revolution's most visible faces, rallying crowds and projecting defiance.

The Supreme Court annulled the fraudulent results. A new election was held in December, and this time Yushchenko won cleanly.

Tymoshenko's reward came in January 2005: she became Ukraine's first female Prime Minister.

The Troubled Orange Government

The Orange Revolution coalition carried enormous hopes. Here was a chance to break with the corruption and authoritarianism of the Kuchma years, to push Ukraine toward European integration and genuine democracy. Forbes magazine ranked Tymoshenko the third most powerful woman in the world.

The reality proved messier.

Tymoshenko's first government lasted barely eight months. By September 2005, President Yushchenko had dismissed her amid accusations of corruption against members of her government and deepening conflicts within the Orange coalition. The revolutionaries who had stood together on the Maidan couldn't agree on how to govern.

She returned to opposition, rebuilding her political machine. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, her bloc performed strongly enough that she was again appointed Prime Minister in December 2007. This second government would last more than two years, but it too was marked by constant warfare with President Yushchenko—the man she had once elevated to the presidency.

The relationship between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko captures something tragic about Ukrainian politics. Two people who had stood together against a common enemy found themselves unable to cooperate once they held power. Their feuding paralyzed reform efforts and disillusioned the millions who had believed the Orange Revolution would transform Ukraine.

The 2010 Election and Imprisonment

By 2010, the Ukrainian public had grown exhausted with Orange infighting. In the presidential election, Tymoshenko faced Viktor Yanukovych again—the same man whose stolen victory had sparked the revolution six years earlier. This time, the election was free and fair.

Yanukovych won by 3.5 percentage points.

What followed was a systematic campaign to destroy Tymoshenko politically and personally. In 2011, she was arrested and charged with abuse of power related to a natural gas agreement she had negotiated with Russia as Prime Minister. The charge centered on whether she had exceeded her authority in signing the deal—a question that in most democracies would be a matter for political debate, not criminal prosecution.

She was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.

International reaction was swift and harsh. The European Union, the United States, and human rights organizations condemned the prosecution as politically motivated. The case became a major obstacle to Ukraine's aspirations for closer European integration. European leaders who might otherwise have welcomed Ukraine into the fold found it impossible to proceed while a former Prime Minister sat in jail on what appeared to be political charges.

The U.S. State Department formally expressed concern that "the prosecution of Tymoshenko should not be selective or politically motivated." The European Court of Human Rights would later rule that her detention had violated her rights.

Tymoshenko spent three years imprisoned.

The Revolution of Dignity

In late 2013, President Yanukovych faced a choice: sign an association agreement with the European Union or accept a Russian counter-offer of loans and cheaper gas. He chose Russia.

The decision sparked massive protests that would dwarf even the Orange Revolution. Once again, Ukrainians filled the Maidan, this time calling their movement Euromaidan or the Revolution of Dignity. For months, protesters braved winter cold, police violence, and eventually sniper fire. Over a hundred people were killed.

In February 2014, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Within days, parliament voted to release Tymoshenko.

She emerged from prison in a wheelchair, her health damaged by years of incarceration. The Supreme Court of Ukraine and the European Court of Human Rights formally rehabilitated her, declaring the prosecution that had imprisoned her unjust.

A snap presidential election was called for May 2014. Tymoshenko ran, but the revolutionary moment had passed her by. Petro Poroshenko, a chocolate magnate who had played a supporting role in both the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan, won in the first round. Tymoshenko finished second, but far behind.

The Survivor

The 2019 presidential election offered what seemed like Tymoshenko's last best chance. For years, polls had shown her as the favorite to win. She had rebuilt her party, maintained her base, and positioned herself as an experienced alternative to both the discredited Poroshenko and various newcomers.

Then a comedian named Volodymyr Zelensky entered the race.

Zelensky had played a president on a popular television show—an ordinary citizen who accidentally gets elected and proceeds to clean up corruption with common-sense honesty. The fictional premise resonated with a public desperate for something new. Zelensky's campaign was conducted largely through social media, bypassing the traditional political machinery that Tymoshenko had spent decades building.

She finished third with 13.4 percent of the vote, failing to qualify for the runoff. Zelensky won in a landslide.

Tymoshenko remains in parliament, leading her Fatherland party in opposition. She has been a consistent advocate for Ukrainian membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, positions that have only grown more urgent since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The Meaning of Tymoshenko

What should we make of a political career that spans gas princess, revolutionary icon, twice prime minister, political prisoner, and perennial also-ran?

Tymoshenko's defenders see her as someone who genuinely tried to reform Ukraine's corrupt energy sector, paid the price for challenging powerful interests, and emerged from unjust imprisonment to continue fighting for her country's European future. Her critics point to the murky origins of her wealth, her inability to work with allies, and question whether her reformist rhetoric ever matched her actions.

Perhaps both views contain truth. Post-Soviet Ukraine was a place where getting anything done required operating within systems of patronage and informal power that would be considered corrupt by Western standards. The question of whether someone like Tymoshenko was a reformer working within a flawed system or simply another participant in that system may not have a clear answer.

What's undeniable is her persistence. Arrested, imprisoned, driven from office, defeated at the polls—she keeps returning. In a country where political careers often end in exile, prison, or worse, simple survival is its own kind of achievement.

The braided hairstyle she adopted during the Orange Revolution—a traditional Ukrainian crown of braids—became her trademark, a visual symbol of Ukrainian identity that she has maintained through all her political transformations. It's a reminder that in Ukraine, politics and national identity have always been inseparable.

Whatever her ultimate legacy, Yulia Tymoshenko's story is inseparable from the story of independent Ukraine itself: the chaotic privatization of the 1990s, the failed promise of the Orange Revolution, the tragedy of Yanukovych's authoritarian turn, the hope and horror of Euromaidan, and the existential struggle that followed Russia's invasion. She has been present at every turning point, sometimes shaping events, sometimes shaped by them, but always somehow still standing when the dust settles.