page_title: Yulia Tymoshenko
section_title: In opposition after 2010 presidential election
hierarchical_section_title: Yulia Tymoshenko / Political career / In opposition after 2010 presidential election
caption_attribution_description: EPP Summit September 2010
context_page_description: Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko is a Ukrainian politician.
  Tymoshenko is the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" political party. She supports Ukraine's integration into the European Union and strongly opposes the membership of Ukraine in the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union. She supports NATO membership for Ukraine.
  Tymoshenko co-led the Orange Revolution and was the first woman appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine, serving from 24 January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010. She placed third in Forbes magazine's list of the world's most powerful women in 2005.
  Tymoshenko finished second in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election runoff, losing by 3.5 percentage points to the winner, Viktor Yanukovych. In the concluding days of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, she was released after three years in jail. She again finished second in the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election, this time to Petro Poroshenko. After being a heavy favorite in the polls for several years, she came third in the first round of the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election.
context_section_description: During a nationally televised address on 22 February, Tymoshenko said of President-elect of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and "Yanukovych's team" (she referred to them in the speech as "The oligarchy"): "They need cheap labour, poor and disenfranchised people who can be forced to work at their factories for peanuts, they also need Ukraine's riches, which they have been stealing for the last 18 years." During the speech she also accused outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko of "opening the door to massive and flagrant election rigging" days before 7 February runoff of the January 2010 presidential election by amending the election law. During a Cabinet of Ministers meeting on 24 February, Tymoshenko stated, "The moment of truth has arrived: The decision whether or not to side with Yanukovych will show who values the preservation of Ukraine's independence and self-identity and who does not." Tymoshenko and her party, Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, boycotted the inauguration ceremony of President Yanukovych on 25 February 2010.
  If the Second Tymoshenko Government could not be preserved, Tymoshenko stated on 22 February 2010, she would go into Parliamentary opposition. On 3 March 2010, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a motion of no confidence in the second Tymoshenko Government in which the cabinet was dismissed with 243 lawmakers voting in favour out of 450 (including seven lawmakers of Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko). (Prime Minister Tymoshenko had demanded this vote herself on 1 March 2010.) On 2 March 2010, the coalition had already lost the parliamentary majority. Before the vote on 3 March, Prime Minister Tymoshenko again stated, "If the dismissal of the government is passed today, at that very same moment our government will leave the cabinet. Our political force will cross into the opposition." Tymoshenko blamed the Lytvyn Bloc and "Our Ukraine, including the leader of Our Ukraine, who announced the position of the faction" for the fall of the cabinet. Tymoshenko resigned from the Prime Minister post on 4 March 2010. Fellow BYuT member Oleksandr Turchynov was empowered to fulfill the Prime Minister's duties until a new government was formed on 4 March 2010. On 9 and 15 March 2010, Tymoshenko called on "all of the national patriotic forces" to unite against Yanukovych. On 16 March, a shadow government including BYuT was established. On 10 May 2010, the People's Committee to Protect Ukraine was established, of which Tymoshenko is one of the representatives. Tymoshenko was against the 2010 Ukrainian-Russian Naval Base for Natural Gas treaty, as she believes the agreement harms Ukraine's national interests.
  On 12 May 2010, Ukraine's prosecutor's office illegally re-opened a 2004 criminal case, which had been closed by the Supreme Court of Ukraine in January 2005 against Tymoshenko regarding accusations that she had tried to bribe Supreme Court judges. As she left the prosecutor's office on 12 May, Tymoshenko told journalists she had been summoned to see investigators again on 17 May, and she linked the move to Russian President Medvedev's visit to Ukraine on 17 and 18 May 2010. Tymoshenko also claimed that she was told by "all the offices of the Prosecutor General's Office" that President Yanukovych had personally instructed the Prosecutor General's Office to find any grounds to prosecute her. In a press conference on 12 May, President Yanukovych's representative in the Verkhovna Rada, Yury Miroshnychenko, dismissed Tymoshenko's statement about Yanukovych's personal interest in prosecuting her. "Yanukovych is against political repression for criticism of the regime," Miroshnychenko stated.
  On 15 December 2010, the General Prosecutor's Office instituted a criminal case against Tymoshenko, alleging that she misused funds received by Ukraine within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. She was officially charged on 20 December 2010. Tymoshenko denied the money had been spent on pensions, insisting it was still at the disposal of the environment ministry.  She called the investigation against her a witch-hunt. According to government officials, th
caption: Tymoshenko in September 2010
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