An Old Face for the New Ukraine

[unhappycamper]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304418404579465153262829282



An Old Face for the New Ukraine
By Matthew Kaminski
Updated March 27, 2014 3:01 p.m. ET

She's back. Yulia Tymoshenko—surely the most talented, divisive, eye-catching politician in Ukraine—on Thursday announced, as expected, her candidacy for president.

Ukraine's commitment to hold elections May 25 is an achievement in itself. Russian troops are massed on its borders and last week Vladimir Putin annexed its Crimean peninsula. As the economy worsens, Ukraine's interim leaders on Thursday struck an interim $18 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, which comes with painful energy price increases and budget cuts.

But as hard as Russia's trying to derail this election, politics goes on in Kiev. Ms. Tymoshenko is its familiar face. She spent the revolution in the capital's Independence Square as a political prisoner of the ousted president and her nemesis, Viktor Yanukovych. As he fled the country last month, she was released and jumped, undeterred by a bad back and shady reputation, right back in.

Ms. Tymoshenko brings enough baggage from her past as an energy tycoon, opposition leader and two-time prime minister to sink a lesser politician. But she's immediately reasserted herself in chaotic Kiev. Her people hold most of the important jobs in the transitional government. She's also led the response to the Putin onslaught from behind the scenes. At her initiative, prominent business tycoons were tapped to fill empty governor's offices in critical cities in eastern Ukraine that came under assault from pro-Russian separatists.

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Mu understanding is Ukraine/Tymoshenko is corrupt as hell.