The Czech Republic granted asylum to the husband of Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko today as her party said Kiev was stepping up pressure on the family.
Oleksander Tymoshenko (51) had sought asylum in the European Union member state late last year after his wife, a former prime minister, was jailed for seven years for abuse of office.
The United States and EU denounced her prosecution as politically motivated. The move has strained president Viktor Yanukovich's relations with the West.
The asylum request was confirmed by Czech officials after a report in the Czech newspaper Pravo.
"The request has been dealt with positively," interior minister Jan Kubice said on Czech Television. He said asylum was granted Friday.
Earlier in Kiev, Tymoshenko's party issued a statement saying her family was under pressure from the government and that her husband had sought asylum abroad so her persecutors would have less leverage over her.
"This step by Oleksander Tymoshenko is in response to amoral attempts to pressure and torment Yulia Tymoshenko by persecuting her loved ones and family," Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) said.
A defence lawyer for Tymoshenko said the couple's daughter, 31-year-old Yevgenia, had no plans yet to follow her father.
The Czech Republic, part of the former Soviet bloc until the 1989 "Velvet Revolution," has a policy of supporting opposition in countries that have patchy human rights records, including Cuba and Belarus, a legacy of late president Vaclav Havel.
The asylum is the second high-profile application in the past year in the Czech Republic after it gave refuge to a Tymoshenko ally, Bohdan Danylyshyn, in early 2011.