Yulia Tymoshenko - Political Positions

Political Positions

Tymoshenko wants her country to become a member of the EU, while she is also concerned about antagonizing Russia. "I try to defend our interests so that we can find a balance in our relations both with the EU and Russia". Tymoshenko supports Ukraine joining NATO stating it would be "uncomfortable" for Ukraine to remain "in a void, outside all existing security systems". But, according to Tymoshenko, the question of Ukraine's joining any system of collective security would "be resolved only by referendum." Tymoshenko is in favour of close relations with the EU, including the creation of a free trade area between Ukraine and EU and later a full membership, preferably in 2015. According to Tymoshenko: "The European project has not been completed as yet. It has not been completed because there is no full-fledged participation of Ukraine." She is against foreign intervention in internal Ukrainian affairs: "Ukraine's realization of its sovereign rights, forming a modern political nation, cannot be considered as a policy aimed against anyone". Tymoshenko does not want to expand the lease contract of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Ukraine because "The Constitution of Ukraine quite clearly stipulates that foreign military bases cannot be deployed in Ukraine, and this constitutional clause is the fundamental basis of the state's security".

According to Tymoshenko, Ukraine is a "unitary and indivisible state". Tymoshenko considers separatist attitudes in Ukraine unacceptable; "Love one another, from Donetsk, Crimea, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kiev and all the other corners of our native land". According to Tymoshenko, citizens in the Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk already understood Ukrainian in Soviet times and that problems surrounding the Russian language in Ukraine were being "exaggerated and don't exist".

Tymoshenko opposes the introduction of Russian as a second official state language, and she does not believe the rights of Russian speakers are violated in current Ukraine. About her own attitude towards Ukrainian, Tymoshenko has stated "that today I am thinking and living for Ukrainian... and the fact that I know Russian very well, I think it is not a secret for you... you all know that I was brought up in the Russian speaking region in Dnipropetrovsk, to my mind, I spared no effort to speak Ukrainian as soon as possible as I came in the Government".

The first Tymoshenko Government planned to renationalise 3,000 firms but the cabinet was sacked before those plans could materialise. Tymoshenko believes that Ukraine's economy is excessively monopolized. Some Ukrainian politicians and academics have described her politically as a state socialist. Tymoshenko is against privatization of the gas transportation system in Ukraine. Tymoshenko lists the recovery of the economy of Ukraine during the 2008–2009 Ukrainian financial crisis as one of her achievements. The second Tymoshenko Government has spent 1.6 billion hryvnya on updating coal mines.

Tymoshenko wants to increase a rise in the general level of social standards by equalizing salaries in the industrial and social spheres and pledged in November 2009 to revamp Ukraine's hospitals and health system within two years and tax breaks for farmers. Other economic policies included compensation for depositors who lost Soviet-era savings, price controls on food and medicines to bring inflation down, calls for a review of murky privatisations and high social spending. Tymoshenko wants to cut the number of taxes by a third, simplifying the system, and wants to cut Value Added Tax (VAT) and offer tax breaks to importers of new technologies as well as poor regions to boost investment. In December 2009, the second Tymoshenko Government proposed creating independent anti-corruption bureaus in Ukraine.

Tymoshenko believes Ukraine could gain energy security through the development and construction of more nuclear power stations and she wants to speed up exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas on the Black Sea shelf.

Tymoshenko is for the cancellation of Verkhovna Rada deputies' immunity from prosecution. For Ukraine Tymoshenko prefers the proportional representation voting system with open lists. Tymoshenko wants to reform the forming of state executive bodies and favours giving parliamentary opposition "real instruments of influence on the authorities", wants Ukrainian court system reforms and wants to re-transfer executive power to local authorities. Tymoshenko want Ukrainians "to live in a dictatorship of the constitution and the law". In the summer of 2009, Tymoshenko claimed she tried to bring together different political parties in order to amend the constitution and switch to a parliamentary form of government.

In November 2009, Tymoshenko called Ukraine "an absolutely ungovernable country" due to the changes to the Constitution of Ukraine as a part of a political compromise between the acting authorities (former-President Kuchma) and opposition during the Orange Revolution (Tymoshenko has argued those reform were "incomplete" and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc voted against them in December 2004). In January 2010, Tymoshenko called for urgent amendments to the Constitution via the majority of the Verkhovna Rada after a survey or plebiscite is conducted. In April 2011 she still believed the constitution "didn't work".

In December 2010, Tymoshenko stated she might run for President in 2015; but that this also depended on her family.

In February 2011, Tymoshenko stated "Viktor Yanukovych’s naked attempt to hijack the election that precipitated the Orange Revolution should have resulted in him being banned from running in future elections". She also believes "building a genuine civil society" is the best way to help democracy.