10 The Times Magazinemanager in 2016, conducted a smear campaign
against Tymoshenko on Yanukovych’s behalf.
The aim was to “plant some stink” on her
ahead of the 2012 parliamentary elections
by placing articles in the western media that
portrayed her as corrupt and antisemitic.
Tymoshenko remained in prison for
three years, staging occasional hunger strikes,
until Ukraine was rocked by another popular
uprising in 2014.
The so-called Euromaidan revolution
erupted when Yanukovych, under Kremlin
pressure, opted for closer ties with Russia
over an association agreement with the
European Union that had been approved
by Ukraine’s parliament. Riots broke out.
Protesters seized and occupied Maidan
Nezalezhnosti. Scores were killed in clashes
with the security forces. The uprising ended
with Yanukovych fleeing to Russia and
Tymoshenko’s release.
Petro Poroshenko, Yanukovych’s successor
as president, duly signed the association
agreement. Putin responded by forcibly
annexing Crimea, and that was when the West
made its first “strategic mistake”, Tymoshenko
says. It failed to honour the security guarantees
it had given Ukraine when it surrendered its
Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1994.
The West’s response to Russia’s aggression
was “very weak”, just as it was when Russia
seized South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008.
“Evil that is not punished has a tendency to
return, and that’s what’s happened now,” she
says. “It’s a price being paid by all of us, but
most of all by Ukraine.”In 2007 Tymoshenko met her idol, Margaret
Thatcher, in London. She still keeps a
photograph of their encounter, and an
inscribed copy of Thatcher’s memoirs, in her
office. “Be strong. Be strong for your country,”
the former British prime minister told her.
Tymoshenko has taken that advice to heart.
She sees no room for compromise with
Putin. He uses so-called peace talks to
“fool everybody”, she says. They are “Putin’s
instrument to ruin western unity, slow the
application of sanctions, disorientate the
people of Europe and fragment the Ukrainian
people and army”.
The only agreement he would sign
would be one that mandates Ukraine’s
unilateral disarmament and rejection of Nato
membership. “If you put those two things
together it means it won’t be long before he
tries again to recapture a Ukraine weakened
by diplomatic means.”
Putin would not stop there, she warns. He
would be emboldened in his “ill-conceived
historic mission” to rebuild a Russian empire.
His next targets would be the Baltic states and
the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern
Europe. “We have to understand that this warisn’t a war between Russia and Ukraine. It’s
a war between Russia and the free democratic
world... It’s a story about their own survival
and their own future.”
She is careful to express gratitude for the
sanctions, weapons and humanitarian support
the West has already given Ukraine, and
singles out Boris Johnson for praise. “If all
the leaders inside and outside Europe showed
Johnson’s leadership then we would be fine.”
But that is not enough. She says Ukraine
needs more and better weaponry. She quotes
Winston Churchill’s message to President
Roosevelt in 1941: “Give us the tools, and
we will finish the job.”
She wants the West to impose “brutal,
decisive, mortal sanctions that ruin Russia’s
economy to point zero and mean Putin’s Russia
can never again conduct military operations.
That would be the moment the Russian people
can change their rulers by themselves.”
Those sanctions must include a total ban
on buying Russian oil and gas – “the rivers
of blood financing Putin’s war” – no matter
how great the short-term pain. “European
countries and the world have to learn to live
without Russia’s energy resources.”
She also wants the EU and Nato to offer
Ukraine immediate membership. “After the
Orange Revolution the EU and Nato refused
to take Ukraine as a member. There was this
illusion that they could still somehow manage
to live with Russia as partners, not enemies.
There’s no reason to believe that any more.
It’s impossible now.”
Tymoshenko does not rule out Putin
using chemical, biological or tactical nuclear
weapons inside Ukraine, but dismisses Nato’sfear that its direct involvement in the conflict
could trigger another world war.
“That fear is an instrument Putin uses
against the West to intimidate it and prevent
it from action,” she says. “We are seeing and
have tested already the quality of the Russian
soldiers and of Russian arms. We have seen
how poorly the Russian army is organised...
This is the time when Putin and the West
should change places. It is Putin who should
now be afraid of the West, not vice versa.”
She remains confident Ukraine can win
the war, even in the Donbas region. The
longer it lasts, the stronger, prouder and more
united Ukrainians have become, she says.
Taking refuge from incoming Russian
missiles in Kharkiv, where most of the
population speak Russian and used to
be well disposed towards Moscow, she
found the shelter plastered with signs
proclaiming “Glory to Ukraine” and “Go
f*** yourself” – the message that defiant
Ukrainian border guards sent to Russian
warships when they attacked Snake Island
at the start of the war.
“Never is Putin going to be met with flowers
in Kharkiv, Odesa or any other city in south
or east Ukraine,” she says. He has achieved
the exact opposite of what he intended.
No interview with Tymoshenko is complete
without a question about her trademark
braided hair, which she once let down in
the middle of a press conference to prove
that it was real. “It’s the traditional braid of
Ukrainian women,” she says. “It’s a symbol
of strength and confidence. But in the present
circumstances I believe it’s also a symbol
of future victory.” nIN 2007 SHE MET HER IDOL, MARGARET THATCHER,
WHO TOLD HER, ‘BE STRONG FOR YOUR COUNTRY’
Addressing Ukraine’s parliament, October 2021GETTY IMAGES