Jailed Ukrainian ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is to be taken for medical treatment outside the detention centre in Kyiv where she is being held, President Viktor Yanukovych said on Tuesday.
A Ukrainian human rights monitor was quoted on Monday as saying that Tymoshenko, 50, who was jailed for seven years last month for abuse of office, was in poor health and had been unable to move from her bed when she visited her in her cell.
Yanukovych, speaking at news conference with visiting Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, said he had been in contact with the prosecutor general and relevant ministries about his rival’s health.
"I was informed that the system (of medical treatment in jail) … is not up to the required standards. So this treatment or medical services will have to be provided in medical institutions in Kyiv, in the coming days, either today or tomorrow," he said.
The Tymoshenko affair has sparked a crisis in Ukraine’s relations with the European Union with which the Kyiv leadership is trying to tie up deals on association and free trade.
Yanukovych is under pressure from the 27-member bloc to free the opposition leader whom he narrowly beat for the presidency in a bitterly fought run-off in February 2010.
She says her trial is a vendetta by him and the EU has backed her case, saying her trial was politically motivated.
