Health of Ukraine’s ex-PM worsens sharply

The health of Ukraine’s jailed and hunger-striking former premier Yulia Tymoshenko has deteriorated to the point where she can no longer stand up from her hospital bed, her lawyer said on Wednesday. Tymoshenko is on the tenth day of a hunger strike protesting alleged fraud in the October 28 parliamentary elections won by the party of her foe President Viktor Yanukovych. “Yulia Vladimirovna’s health condition has worsened drastically,” lawyer Olexander Plakhotnyuk told journalists outside of the Kharkiv hospital where Tymoshenko has been treated for back pain since this summer. “She practically doesn’t stand up these days,” he said. “I could only speak with her for several minutes.” He said her weakening health could be caused by the hunger strike or by her refusal of medical treatment. Tymoshenko announced on Oct.29, the day after parliamentary elections, that she would be refusing food in protest against violations in the polls won by the ruling party. The 2004 Orange Revolution leader was controversially convicted in October 2011 for abuse of power while in office, in what she calls a political vendetta on the part of her arch-foe Yanukovych. She was this summer moved to a hospital from the jail where she is serving her seven year sentence. As part of her latest protest, Tymoshenko, who suffers from back pain, this week refused to be checked by doctors. Political tensions have surged this week in Ukraine as the authorities have still failed to publish final results from the elections more than a week after voting finished. International OSCE observers had said in their final election report that they asked to visit the ex-premier in the hospital but were denied access, calling it another proof that Ukraine is on a path of “democratic regression.” The opposition’s pro-Tymoshenko Fatherland bloc branded the polls a “bacchanalia of banditry” and thousands of people protested in the capital Kiev over the weekend against Yanukovych’s winning Regions Party.