Yulia Tymoshenko is a real political heavyweight, in her recent interview with UP, the leader of Batkivshchyna talked about how her team works during the war, explained her relationship with the President's Office, shared her opinion on why Putin is not going to hold peace talks, mentioned "gas contracts" with the Russian Federation and admitted that her family lives abroad.
- Let's start from the very beginning - from February 24. How did you learn about the war? Did you have any plan of action for the party at that time?
- I remember when my husband and I woke up around 5 o'clock in the morning because rockets started falling into Ukraine, and we heard it very well. I will not heroize this situation - it was very scary. That's fair. And this fear, it was so cold and spread all over the body.
It was not easy to get together in the first hours. But I remember that within half an hour I started calling all the members of our team and gathering them in the office to discuss how to act in this situation.
It was a very difficult day in my personal life, in the life of my family, in the life of the country.
But after a few days, when we all realized that this was a real war, for many Ukrainians this initial fear began to melt into something completely different: into anger and indignation, and then into responsibility and the ability to proudly defend their country.
You know, it seems to me that when the first rocket fell into Ukraine, everything that happened before that was nullified. This applies to everything: politics, human relations, etc.
And the first calls were about the fact that we should all become one force. Almost everyone I talked to during those hours went to the front to defend Ukraine. And there were hundreds of calls. I can't even remember now which is the first, which is the second.
This feeling was a completely new reality.
- You said that you called the members of the faction. Can you tell who and where he was at that time? Have many members of your faction gone to the front or to the Teroboron, or are they abroad (I can't help but ask this question as well)?
- There are no faction members abroad. War really tests people very hard. Because a whole spectrum of emotions arises in many people - from self-sacrifice to animal fear.
We should not speak in pathetic words now, but it is true. I am proud that my team managed it. And today, about half of our male factions have joined the Teroboron. Several of them even joined the leadership of the Teroboron structures.
I can say that the heads of regional party organizations have almost everything in our territory defense. Three of them went to the front. These are the Khmelnytskyi region, the Volyn region, and the Rivne region, which today are on the front lines, took the oath, took up arms and went to defend the country. Tens of thousands of members of our party.
- What security measures does your security take and where are you all the time of the war?
- First: my schedule is Kyiv and the hottest spots where we can be most useful.
I have never been to Western Ukraine during this time, I want to go, but there was no such opportunity.
I can say that everything has really changed. This is how it is possible to have security now, to be protected, when today the whole country is a big rip-off from Russia's aggressive actions?
Today, each of us is protected by the armed forces of Ukraine, protected by our army, protected by security forces, protected by our national security forces. And now it seems to me that any security is meaningless.
- Are you saying that you don't have personal security now?
- We have people who have always worked, they are now working as loaders, loading humanitarian aid. And how can you protect yourself from flying missiles, from bullets, which are now practically in every region, from DRGs, and so on?
Today we all rely on our guardian angels, on our army. And indeed, it is unique.
We were not part of the coalition and will not be
- You continue to work in the VRU. How does the Verkhovna Rada work now? What processes are taking place, because the meetings continue behind closed doors?
- The first meetings of the Verkhovna Rada are, in fact, front meetings, when the situation in Kyiv was very heated. They met literally for an hour, but before meeting, all the laws were passed without exception.
Only those bills related to national security and defense of the country were passed. And only those accepted by all factions by consensus.
I do not recall such a thing in the history of independent Ukraine. It has never happened before that dozens of laws were voted unanimously, that everyone was like a new team.
And it gave pride in the fact that you can put everything aside. Politics has become zero. Now there is no politics as such: there is no competition, criticism, making any public decisions.
On the one hand, it is strange, and on the other, it cannot be otherwise.
But it worries me a little, and we came up with a proposal for the parliament to start working normally. It was my proposal that we should move to full publicity of votes and public discussions.
I emphasize once again, when hospitals work around the clock in the epicenter of war, and everyone knows that this is a military hospital and people go to work, the Verkhovna Rada should work in the same way.
And I hope that such discussions will take place from the next meeting. Because there are already proposed economic laws, very debatable.
- Explain why these laws are debatable? Do we understand correctly that you do not like something about them?
- I don't really like the fact that laws on the accelerated privatization of "sweet" objects are beginning to be enacted under martial law.
I believe that this is impossible during the war. There are no market conditions, no competition, nothing to allow fair privatization.
And in general - is now the time to think about it? When we don't know which enterprises in general will remain with us after victory, and which will not.
The second is to withdraw taxes from the gambling business. Well, what kind of gambling business is it when there is blood, when children are shot, when women and children are raped too? How can you talk about such things?
And so we would like the war to work as a huge purgatory for politicians. So that politics against the background of such grief, heroism, struggle, so that it becomes transparent, so that there is not all this dirt.
And, of course, the emphasis should be on three things: this is the defense of the country, the protection of the people during the war who simply lost their lives today, and the third - everything that is needed to save the economy of the country.
These three blocs should now dominate the work of the Verkhovna Rada.
- We will move from the VRU to the President of Ukraine. How do you assess the actions of Zelenskyi and his team?
- You know, now everything is divided into "before the war" and "after the war."
Before the war, we were quite a tough opposition, and we did not pass any laws that, in our opinion, were unworthy of Ukraine. But as soon as the first day of the war thundered, we got together as a team and made a decision that we support our president, our army, our government, our country.
I respect the president today. I think he behaves with dignity and holds the punch.
Yes, we are opponents, yes, we are different political forces. But I can't help but admit that he behaves in a way that deserves respect.
- You said that you were in the opposition. But the parliament has been saying for more than a year that the "Fatherland" faction cooperates with the President's Office regarding voting in the Rada, when the monomajority lacks its votes.
There was a rather revealing case when some of your deputies publicly declared that they would not vote for the dismissal of Dmytro Razumkov from the position of chairman of the VRU, but when it came down to it, "Batkivshchyna" added 20 votes to "Servant of the People". So the question is: under what conditions did Batkivshchyna work with the Office of the President until February 24?
- You know, the best proof of this is statistics. You can open, in my opinion, either "Word and Deed" or "Honestly" (I don't remember) - they considered what percentage of votes were in favor of the bills proposed by the government and what percentage of votes were against.
Almost all opposition factions had plus or minus about 30% - the same percentage. But most of the laws were not supported. We did not support the key draft laws that we recognized as wrong for Ukraine. This is also the land reform - you know that we saw a completely different development, this is the gambling business, and the privatization of strategic objects, and the privatization of Oschadbank and Ukroboronprom.
That is, we did not have absolute ideological unity with this team.
Today, honestly, it's even kind of embarrassing to remember all these political frictions during the war.
But I will tell you that we have, in my opinion, two people who advocated not supporting Razumkov's release. And our entire faction voted unequivocally for it. And I'll tell you why.
We believed that the turbo regime was unacceptable for the country, when the discussion of laws was leveled and parliamentarism was destroyed by this turbo regime. And we believe that this happened at the time when Dmytro headed the Verkhovna Rada
We categorically do not share his vote for the sale of land, gambling business, privatization of strategic objects and other things that are absolutely ideologically incompatible with us. We believed that he could not then protect the country and the parliament from the adoption of such laws.
— Okay, but can Stefanchuk avoid the turbo mode, if such a question arises in the future?
- We did not vote for Stefanchuk. And I want us to clearly divide it: there is a time before the war, a time after the war. Before the war, we did not vote for his appointment.
We will definitely think about how to vote for his dismissal, because we have many complaints. But this is during the war.
Now, any conversation that somehow drives a wedge between our teams weakens us. And I want to say that today we are in normal human relations with Dmytro Razumkov.
- The question is not about Rozumkov, but about your relationship with the President's Office. What were they like before full-scale war?
- I want to say that we were not an integral part of the coalition and we will not be. War is unity during war.
But we do not radically divide many things related to the economy and the social sphere.
I have a categorical condition for the family: that their business should not be connected with Ukraine
- Last year, cameras recorded from the balcony of the parliament how you corresponded with the head of the OPU Andriy Yermak. You arranged a meeting, wrote and even hugged. What is your relationship with Yermak?
— Today there are none, I would say so. We have no meetings, no contacts, no conversations, nothing.
From the first day when this president came, if you remember, we offered help from all directions of the country's development.
And this does not mean that it is a position. This means that we have worked out a fundamental strategic plan on how to make the country successful. And this is a professional plan, there is not a single word of populism. This applies to every area of our lives. If you remember, this plan was called the New Deal.
We did what we could do. And they never announced from the first day that we are confrontational. We were always there and ready to help. But that didn't mean we should vote for something we didn't share - under no circumstances.
And, unfortunately, it never happened that we felt like one team with the Office of the President, with the President. I say - unfortunately. It was before the war.
- After the victory, do you plan to return to the opposition?
- I think it is quite obvious, because before the war we did not divide social and economic policy. And we had and still have a lot of questions.
But you rightly said that it is all after the victory. We are all one team now, and I will not allow anyone from my team to destroy that unity.
- Since we were talking about the family, at the beginning of the year, UP recorded how you flew in from Dubai. According to our information, you were there for almost a month, and your daughter's family lives there now. Is this true?
- Long before the start of the war, given that I forbade my children to do business in Ukraine, and both are doing business, they decided to try to stay in another country. I went to see them.
- That is, your children live there?
- I would say that he does not live, but tries to work.
Putin is not conducting peace talks, this is technology
- We talk a lot about victory. What will be a victory for you?
- There is no doubt that the war will end in victory. But what is the way to this end? We must understand that victory is the result of our strength.
What is our strength?
The first is the unique quality of our army. The army is the basis for victory.
The second is the strength of every Ukrainian, united today on one big front. Every Ukrainian does everything to win.
The third component of strength, which has never existed in Ukraine, is that the entire civil society has united around us. And together, our starting positions of strength are such that negotiations with the aggressor country should be based only on our interests.
In short, this is the capitulation of the aggressor country. This is what the negotiations should be about.
We liberate region by region, we liberate village by village in different regions. Yes, it is difficult for us in Mariupol, yes, it is difficult for us in the Kherson region. But we expel them. And to say that Ukraine needs to accept some ultimatums from some scumbags is simply not appreciating what we have.
At first, the Kremlin set several difficult conditions: a ban on Ukraine joining NATO, demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of Crimea and Donbas as Russian.
With these negotiations, they are practically paving their way, if not today, then tomorrow to capture Ukraine and make it part of their prison. We cannot fail to understand this. And when we are offered security guarantees instead, especially by a country that shoots and rapes our children, that kills our families, it can be madness to accept such guarantees.
Therefore, I perceive this process not as peaceful, but in fact far from peaceful proposals of the aggressor country. These things are unacceptable, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they should not be accepted at a time when Ukraine has already become a free world. We are not dividing Ukraine and the free world now.
- What will surrender mean for you?
- Everything, except victory on the battlefield.
— In 2009, you held negotiations with Vladimir Putin, when you were the prime minister. Those were gas negotiations. Can you tell me how Putin behaves during negotiations? Maybe he uses some "tricks"?
- More than once, in the position of prime minister, I had the opportunity to debate and try to come to an agreement. Therefore, today I will simply tell you clearly: he will not stop. As long as he is alive, he will never give up the capture of Ukraine. Not Donbas, not Crimea, not some separate territory. throughout Ukraine. So today I speak with full understanding: no negotiations.
Because Putin does not really conduct negotiations with an orientation towards the world. Here's what you need to understand.
All imitations of outside negotiations are the way of the world and the goal of the world. Here's what you need to understand. And I will say even deeper. These are not peace negotiations, this is a development that was also used during the 14th and 15th years with all the "Minsk" parties.
Because the very illusion of peace negotiations gives arguments to those Western countries that have not yet decided whose side they are on, and allows these countries to depart from those positions that the united West produces.
These are negotiations that demoralize and demotivate our army. This is not a negotiation for the world, this is the technology of our weakening.
And if we do not understand this, then we will grasp for something that does not exist. And I want to say this to all the leaders of the state: keep in mind, this is technology that makes us weaker. And the conditions they impose on us, beat us, destroy our sovereignty.
We will be bound by obligations that limit the development strategy, the creation of a strong security system.
You understand that today the main guarantor of peace in Ukraine is only Ukraine and the Armed Forces. When it all went down, you and I realized that no guarantees would work.
The 2009 gas contract was certainly a success.
- If you had the opportunity before signing the gas agreements in 2009 to see what we faced in 2022, would you have signed them?
- I simply advise everyone who has not yet dealt with this issue, just take a pencil and read these agreements carefully. They gave Ukraine the right to live for ten years. And no one broke these agreements, no matter which president or prime minister came.
On the basis of these agreements, incredibly large amounts of money were won for Ukraine. Without these agreements, it was impossible to win them. And I want to remind you that in 2009 it was the lowest price for gas on the entire European continent, set by Yanukovych's court and Yanukovych's prosecutor's office.
And for three years, an additional document was signed, which maintained this price.
- I am more about the value aspect. Don't you think that you are responsible for the situation in which the country is now?
- I believe that any politician who held high positions in Ukraine is responsible for all the consequences that are taking place. And I think that such recognition is fair.
And, of course, if I did something wrong, I want to apologize, especially in these tragic days of the war in Ukraine. I want to apologize to anyone who thinks that I did something wrong that people would like.
- Yulia Volodymyrivna, you say that the gas deals were good. But, among other things, these contracts established Gazprom's monopoly on the supply of natural gas to Ukraine, established the "take or pay" principle, which provided for fines for Ukraine in the event of a shortage of Russian gas in the amount specified in the contract. And the price for one thousand cubic meters of gas was fixed in the contract - 450 dollars. Can you explain why this contract was good?
- When there was nothing to blame me for, Yanukovych and Putin were looking for anything. And they, according to Manafort's idea - at that time, you know, Manafort was an integral part of Yanukovych's headquarters - launched this whole process. You know how Manafort ended, you know how Yanukovych ended.
And you know that I received the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in my favor and received the decision of the entire composition of the Supreme Court of Ukraine that my actions did not have any elements of a crime.
This is the first. So that we understand where this story comes from in general. Secondly, what concerns the contract. Look carefully at the materials of the criminal case.
- I didn't talk about the case at all, I asked about the contract.
- Yes, about the contract. Look at the materials of the case, where the prosecutor's office and the court of Rodion Kireev, who was not on my side, decided that under this contract the price of gas is $232 for 2009 (the parties then applied a temporary "discount" - UP). It's just important to know.
There were no advertised prices. And this is evidenced by the materials of the criminal case. This was confirmed in court.
Second: Clause 4.4 of this contract - I'm telling you - it says that for each year the national Ukrainian authorities have the right to agree on the price for each time period independently. That is, every year there are price negotiations.
As for the cost of transit, this, you know, was signed in the package - transit and the purchase of gas. Transit was maxed out in this contract and the cost of transit was raised by 30% compared to what it was before. And in transit, the procedure of "pay or transit" was established.
And in a mirror image, we set the optimal volume of gas, but in this case we were presented with a typical contract of the European Union and defended the position that if transit is "transit or pay", then take the amount of gas you need and also "take or pay". That is, it was a common European principle in all contracts signed with European countries.
And then it was overturned in international courts for all countries. But the principle of "transit or pay" remained, which allowed us to win huge money.
- Do you consider the gas contract a success?
- Undoubtedly. And this is luck for the country. For 10 years, the country has steadily consumed natural gas. And if it weren't for the 14th war, we would have the lowest price imaginable for this contract. So I think history will judge this contract.
On the first day of victory, I plan to sleep
- When you see 93% of support for Zelenskyi's actions as president - how do you feel? Are you worried that you may not find a place in politics after the victory?
- First of all, the confidence rating that you mentioned, 93% - I think that is a well-deserved confidence rating.
And I believe that today everyone should do what a person should do during such a tragedy. And then life will show.
- Are you not panicking about the political future?
- Do you suspect that after 20 years of being in politics I can panic (smiles)? Panic and my character are two incompatible things.
We work every day, we do our job. We try to make it so that you can calmly look in the mirror every day. And this is our task today.
The President of Ukraine, I am sure, will lead our nation, our country to victory. I don't just believe it, I know it. And the people will decide.
And as the people decide, so it will be. I believe that all politicians need to accept the people's choice that will be made.
- I wonder how you see your political future?
- Very easy. All in their own power to serve Ukraine. And full stop.
- Are you not thinking about positions?
- Listen, now in this situation it is simply immoral for me personally or any politician to talk about such things, do you understand? We have no right to think in this direction at all now.
Now there is only one thing: do what you have to do and defend your country by all possible means where you can. All other conversations that have a political context are not only not relevant, but they are harmful to our country today.
- What will you do on the first day of victory? Do you have a plan?
- Yes - I will sleep. I'm telling you honestly. Because the team, and all of us, and all Ukrainians are simply falling off our feet.
Then we will drink so that we can heal the wounds for at least a few hours. And then we will build Ukraine together.
Authors: Sevgil Musaeva, Roman Kravets
Source: UE
