Why was Yulia Tymoshenko imprisoned?
After losing to Yanukovych in February 2010, Tymoshenko fully expected the new authorities to go after her and her team by leveling various criminal charges against them, in keeping with the well-established custom in Ukrainian politics.
But she did not leave without a fight. First, she tried to challenge the election results in court, in connection with the ballot rigging in Crimea in particular, and then refused to resign as prime minister. In March 2010 her cabinet was finally brought down by a parliamentary vote of non-confidence.By the year's end, the new prosecutor general opened or reopened several investigations targeting Tymoshenko, including a case of alleged bribery of Supreme Court judges back in 2004 and an alleged misuse of the funds that Ukraine had received under the Kyoto Protocol for having reduced industrial emissions. The authorities also detained some of her ministers, including the former Minister of the Interior Yuri Lutsenko, charging them with abuse of office and misuse of funds. The Yanukovych team initially thought its best chance to convict Tymoshenko lay in the missing Kyoto funds, which she had allegedly spent on pensions instead of environmental projects. In December she was officially charged and ordered not to leave Kyiv without the prosecutor 's permission. There was just one problem: even if it could be proven that she had misappropriated funds to pay for pensions that directly benefited Ukrainian seniors, such a move would almost certainly have been viewed positively by voters.
In May 2011 the prosecutor general charged Tymoshenko in another case, this one calculated to present her in a negative light for a domestic audience, but at the same time bound to be seen in the West as political misuse of the justice system. She was accused of abuse of power in connection with the 2009 Ukrainian-Russian gas deal.
This particularly nasty installment of the ongoing energy dispute with Russia was still fresh in popular memory in 2011, reinforced as it was by higher heating bills. Since the previous gas contract was set to expire at the end of 2008, the Russian and Ukrainian state gas companies engaged in their usual standoff over prices and the exact amount of the previous Ukrainian debt to Gazprom. As was also the case in 2006, the two countries began the new year without a deal. On January 1, Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, which then started diverting some of the gas in transit to Europe. Russia then completely halted the flow of gas through Ukraine, leading to a notable decrease in gas deliveries to parts of southeastern Europe. Factories had to be stopped in Bulgaria, and Slovenia even declared a state of emergency.
The European Union stepped in to mediate, but it was still up to the Ukrainian government to reach a deal with Russia, and the former did not have many more cards to play. Tymoshenko and Putin (who was prime minister at the time and thus her counterpart) finally reached an agreement on January 18, with the flow of gas restored on January 20, 2010. The 10-year deal was not advantageous for Ukraine because it only received a 20-percent discount for one year, thereafter committing to pay at world market prices. The “discounted” price, US$360 per one thousand cubic meters, already represented a record high for Ukraine. The only thing Tymoshenko could be proud of was the elimination of intermediaries, who had been skimming billions under previous gas deals. Under the new agreement, Gazprom dealt directly with its Ukrainian equivalent, Naftohaz.
Soon after winning the presidency, Yanukovych signed a new gas deal with Russia. In exchange for extending the Russian navy's lease on its Black Sea base in Sevastopol, Crimea, from its previous expiry date of 2016 to 2042, Ukraine secured a multi-year 30-percent discount on Russian gas. Within a year, the prosecutor general laid charges against Tymoshenko, who had allegedly overstepped her authority in concluding the unfavorable 2009 deal.
In October 2011 an obedient city-district court in Kyiv sentenced her to seven years in prison, with the additional stipulation that she be barred from holding public office after her release. The West condemned her sentencing as a clear case of politically motivated selective justice. In a similar high-profile case, former Minister of the Interior Yuri Lutsenko received a four-year sentence for abuse of office.Tymoshenko began serving her term in a correctional facility in the city of Kharkiv, where she developed health issues (later diagnosed as spinal disc herniation) and twice went on a hunger strike. She was eventually moved to a prison hospital. With the victory of the EuroMaidan in 2014, parliament voted to remove from Ukrainian legislation the problematic clause under which Tymoshenko was imprisoned. She returned to Ukrainian politics but was unable to reclaim her old popularity and influence, at least in the short term.