Brussels – President Viktor Yanukovych said on Oct. 17 that he is prepared to sign a law that would allow Yulia Tymoshenko to go for treatment in Germany if parliament approves it.
“Today the political forces represented in parliament have prepared a draft law that would allow to solve this task. Today in Ukraine there is no law that would allow Tymoshenko to leave abroad. As soon as this issue is solved in parliament and the law is placed on my desk, then the question will be to the president. Obviously, if the parliament approves this law, I will sign it,” Yanukovych said during his visit in Donetsk, according to Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
The president also said that a court will likely have to decide about the way for Tymoshenko to leave for treatment, “with preservation of some guarantees.”
The president’s statement is a new indication that the gridlock around Tymoshenko’s imprisonment might be coming to an end. Tymoshenko’s release from prison, where she is serving a seven-year sentence since 2011 for abuse of office, is one of the key conditions for Ukraine to be able to sign an association agreement with the European Union at a November summit. Her case is considered to be political.
Ukraine has until Nov. 18 to solve the problem of Tymoshenko’s release, which by Western leaders is usually referred to as “the issue of selective prosecution.” European foreign ministers will convene on that day to take a political decision on whether Ukraine has fulfilled enough preconditions for the Association Agreement to be signed in Vilnius at the end of November.
Tymoshenko, in her Oct. 4 statement, said that she is prepared to accept the proposal to go for treatment abroad, which was passed to her by Pat Cox and Alexander Kwasniewski, the special envoys for the European Parliament. But she said she would continue to seek full rehabilitation.
“I have fought, am fighting and will fight for a full legal rehabilitation,” Tymoshenko wrote in her statement.
In a letter of appeal to the president, released on Oct. 15, Cox and Kwasniewski requested “that Yulia Tymoshenko be released for medical treatment on health and humanitarian grounds by way of pardon.”
Martin Schulz, head of the European Parliament, told the Kyiv Post that “Cox and Kwasniewski have presented the letter in which a partial pardon is foreseen.” But various parties involved in this case have different interpretations of what a partial pardon envisages.
Serhiy Vlasenko, leader of Tymoshenko’s legal defense team, says that simply releasing Tymoshenko for treatment would not be enough. He said the EU will not be satisfied with anything short of a presidential pardon decree – the same way it happened in the case of Yuriy Lutsenko, the former interior minister who was released from prison this spring.
Vlasenko says partial pardon means that Lutsenko was only relieved from serving the rest of his four-year sentence after he served more than half of it. “If there is no (pardon) decree – there will be no signing,” he said.
The president, however, clearly said that he is not considering a decree, but will sign a law. There is already a bill registered in parliament that could potentially allow Tymoshenko to leave for Germany. The bill was filed in July by a former Batkivshchyna deputy, Serhiy Mishchenko.
It lays out a mechanism for sending a prisoner abroad for treatment after a decision that has to be taken by a special commission, and an expert of the health ministry. It also suggests that the time spent abroad for treatment be counted into the prison time served.
Vlasenko, however, said that the bill is poorly written. For example, it states that the transportation of prisoners outside of Ukraine is conducted at the cost of the receiving nation. He said Ukraine cannot mandate what a foreign government should do.
But even if the existing errors are fixed, it remains unclear whether the opposition and the pro-presidential Party of Regions will vote for the law, whether Tymoshenko will take the offer if it’s approved, and whether this solution will be enough for European leaders to take a positive decision to sign the association agreement with Ukraine.
Several Batkivshchyna representatives could not say if their faction would support such a law. A Party of Regions member said the Tymoshenko law is yet to be discussed at the faction meeting on Oct. 21.
Schulz, the head of the European Palriament, would not speculate whether the law would win support in Europe.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com.
