BERLIN, November 25 (RAPSI) – The daughter of Ukraine’s convicted former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko says she has asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to continue seeking her mother's release for medical treatment abroad.
On November 21, the Ukrainian parliament rejected all six bills that were designed to allow Tymoshenko to receive medical treatment abroad for a chronic back condition that foreign medical experts say needs treatment only available outside Ukraine.
“I think that Germany is the last chance for my mother. Chancellor Merkel must not give up,” Yevgenia Tymoshenko said in an interview with Bild, Germany's largest-circulation newspaper. “If my mother is not released soon, she will die. She is consciously denied medical treatment. She must go abroad.”
According to Yevgenia Tymoshenko, an association agreement with the EU may be concluded. She said that Germany plays a critical role in that issue.
Allowing Tymoshenko to go abroad was the main condition stipulated by EU officials for closing an association agreement with Ukraine, which was due to be signed in Vilnius on November 28-29. But hours after the parliament rejected the bills that would have allowed the former prime minister to go abroad for treatment, Ukraine announced it was putting on hold preparations for the agreement's delivery.
Tymoshenko was sentenced in 2011 to seven years in jail for abuse of power over a gas contract signed with Russia under her premiership and later determined to be financially unfavorable to Ukraine. She has also been accused of organizing the murder of a local politician in 1996.
She insists the charges were politically motivated, and has gained the support of the EU, which has urged Kiev to pardon the former prime minister.
