Tymoshenko Calls for Street Protests after Ukraine's EU Switch
Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko on Friday urged supporters to take to the streets in protest at the government's scrapping of a plan to sign a key trade deal with the European Union.
She also warned her nemesis, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych against making the "mistake of his life," saying signing the agreement with the EU was his only chance to survive in politics.
"Yulia Tymoshenko... calls on Ukrainians to take to the streets across the country," her lawyer Sergiy Vlasenko told reporters in the northeastern city of Kharkiv where the co-leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution is undergoing treatment for her back pain in a hospital.
She compared the decision to the August Coup in the Soviet Union of 1991.
In a letter addressed to Yanukovych and read out by her lawyer, Tymoshenko said the president should immediately reconsider the decision to shelf the signing of the agreement that had been expected to take place at a summit in Vilnius next week.
"This is your only chance to survive as a politician," she said in the letter, her first public reaction to the government decision to put the EU deal on ice.
"Today, by killing the agreement, you are making the mistake of your life."
"You think you will be able to further conduct the policy of bluffing and blackmail and play between the two civilizational centers, receiving from them coveted gifts to retain power," the former prime minister said.
"You are mistaken. You will remain one-on-one with Russia and you will have to live according to her roadmap," she was quoted as saying in the letter.
"Later Russia will give you a choice: either it will save you from the social and economic collapse at the expense of the loss of independence or will not react at all."
Shortly after Yanukovych won presidential elections in 2010, Tymoshenko was jailed for seven years on abuse of power charges while in office.
Source: Agence France Presse
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