page_title: Yulia Tymoshenko
section_title: Political activities after release
hierarchical_section_title: Yulia Tymoshenko / Political career / Political activities after release
caption_attribution_description: Українська: Електоральна підтримка Тимошенко Юлії Володимирівни на виборах Президента України 2014.
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: Immediately after her release from prison on 22 February 2014, Yulia Tymoshenko travelled to Kyiv, where she attended a makeshift memorial to the first slain protesters on Hrushevskogo Street and gave a speech on Maidan stage. In the following days, she had a number of meetings and phone conversations with USA, EU, and OSCE officials. Tymoshenko addressed the European Union, leaders of western democracies and of countries which guaranteed Ukraine's territorial unity according to the Budapest Memorandum; she called for action to stop what she called the "Russian aggression".
  From 6 to 7 March, Tymoshenko attended a political conference of the European People's Party in Dublin, where she openly discussed events with Angela Merkel, Jose Manuel Barroso, Viviane Reding, Michel Barnier, Mariano Rajoy and Donald Tusk, amongst other notable figures. On 7 March 2014, she was admitted to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany, for treatment of her severe back problems.
  Upon her return to Kyiv, Tymoshenko gathered military and defense experts and suggested launching a special headquarters that would elaborate responses to threats coming from Russia.
  On 27 March 2014, at a press conference in Kiev, Tymoshenko stated that she would run in the 2014 presidential election. Two days later, the congress of Batkivshchyna party officially nominated her and on 31 March the Central Election Commission officially registered her as a candidate. The election took place on 25 May. Tymoshenko came a distant second behind Petro Poroshenko. She received 12.39% of the vote.
  In a recording (purportedly a leaked phone conversation with Nestor Shufrych, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine) Tymoshenko appeared to say in reference to the reunification of Crimea with Russia: "This is really beyond all boundaries. It's about time we grab our guns and go kill those damn Russians together with their leader; and nuke 8 million Russians who are now exiles in Ukraine." In a statement, while admitting she had spoken to Shufrych on the telephone, Tymoshenko denied having advocated the use of nuclear bombs against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and avowed that the recording had been deliberately edited to discredit her.
  On 30 August 2014, Tymoshenko announced the start of preparations for the NATO accession referendum.
  In the 2014 parliamentary election "Fatherland" received 5.68% of the vote and 19 seats in parliament. In the elections Tymoshenko was placed second on the parties electoral list, after Nadiya Savchenko. After the election Tymoshenko again became faction leader. She is a member of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada on issues of European integration in the 8th convocation of parliament.
caption: 2014 presidential election percentage of vote for Tymoshenko
exif: {}