CRITICISM BY western governments of the imprisonment of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has surprisingly been echoed by an official statement from the foreign ministry of the Russian Federation.
Ms Tymoshenko was sent to prison in Kiev on Friday having been refused bail on a charge of corruption connected to a gas deal with Russia in 2009.
In a statement on its website the foreign ministry said that the agreement was not only in accordance with the laws of Russia and Ukraine but also with international law. It added that the deal had been cleared by the presidents of Russia and Ukraine at the time.
Until now the conventional wisdom has been that Moscow’s man in the Ukrainian capital was the current president, Viktor Yanukovich, with Ms Tymoshenko cast in the role of Russia’s greatest enemy in Ukraine.
Mr Yanukovich has recently suggested that he would like to renegotiate the gas deal and this is believed to be the main reason not only for Ms Tymoshenko’s arrest but also for Russia’s switching of support to his main political rival.
On its website the foreign ministry also called for a fair trial that should follow basic humanitarian norms, an indirect criticism of the refusal of judge Rodion Kireyev of the Pechersky court in Kiev to accept bail applications on Ms Tymoshenko’s behalf.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has not commented publicly on the matter but the Moscow business newspaper Kommersant quoted a Kremlin source as saying Ms Tymoshenko’s imprisonment could have far-reaching consequences for Mr Yanukovich.
The agreement signed by Ms Tymoshenko in 2009 ended a bitter conflict over gas supplies from Russia to Ukraine, with Ukraine agreeing to pay almost double the previous price for Russian gas.
This latest development in the tense relationship between the countries comes when Ukrainian and Russian diplomats have been putting together agreements relating to the presence of the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol in Crimea.
Russia has had ships based at Sevastopol since Tsarist times but an extravagant gesture by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, when he transferred control of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine, had unforeseen consequences when the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 8th, 1991.
At the time it was made, the “Khrushchev gift” as it became known, made very little difference, as both Russia and Ukraine were ruled directly by the Communist Party in Moscow. After the dissolution, however, the Soviet Black Sea fleet was divided between Ukraine and Russia and the Russians had to strike a deal to pay rent to station their ships in what had become a foreign port.
Western Ukrainian nationalists have fiercely opposed the presence of Russian warships on Ukrainian territory under any circumstances but an article yesterday in the official Russian newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta indicated that further agreement on the details of the Russian fleet’s presence has been reached.