On October 25 Serhii Vlasenko, the counsel for the defense of the former prime-minister passed the appeal against Yulia Tymoshenko’s verdict for the “gas” case to the office of the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv. According to him, the hearing of the case is unlikely to start earlier than in one and a half month.
Will anything happen at the appeal hearing? Will Tymoshenko be released? Only few people believe in it now. Firstly, Prosecutor General’s Office intends to get back to the criminal cases about quotas for CO2 emission and the purchase of ambulances. Secondly, zealous prosecutors brought back the moth-eaten criminal case concerning the debts of the corporation United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU). All of this clearly signalizes that the government wants to leave Tymoshenko in prison at all costs even if it contradicts political reasonability, logic and common sense.
“Everyone has a phobia. Some are afraid of spiders or microbes; Yanukovych’s phobia is Yulia Tymoshenko. What is more, his fear is physiological,” one of the former BYuT members and now member of the fraction “Reforms for the future” told The Day.
Tymoshenko’s counsel of the defense is quite pessimistic. “As far as I know, the judges of the Appeal Court are now being brainwashed so that they use the so-called shortened procedure when hearing the case, without witnesses’ interrogation or investigating the evidences, so that they try this case in five minutes with their eyes closed.”
The political expert Viktor Nebozhenko thinks that nothing will happen at the appeal hearing and the events will develop in another place, namely in the European Court in Strasbourg.
“I think, it is very likely that this case will be heard by the New Year. So, there will be a conflict between the verdict of the Ukrainian court and the European court. There will be an old discussion: what is more important – the European norms or the norms of the Ukrainian legislation.”
Meanwhile, the media have spread the information that the Senior Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin faced problems when visiting the US. He also takes a lead of the “black list” of the people involved into political persecutions in Ukraine made by the opposition. MP Yurii Hrymchak specified at one of the TV channels that this list would result in “accounts and property seizure, they and their families will be prohibited to go abroad, etc.”
There is some talk in the lobby that from now on the Ukrainian judges, prosecutors and other law machinery representatives will have problems with Shengen visas. “Visa denials are the first stage of sanctions. Later they will consider imposing individual sanctions on governing body of the court and public prosecutor’s office,” MP from BYuT, head of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy Oleh Bilorus assures.
However, the former head of the State Committee on Entrepreneurship Oleksandra Kuzhel said referring to the unofficial information received from the European diplomats that “the European bureaucrats want to penalize not only the officials but all the Ukrainian people for Tymoshenko.” Fortunately, this information has not been confirmed. The ordinary Ukrainians receive visas as usual, at least for the time being.
