Do we like them?

Do we like Yulia Tymoshenko?

Our score: 4 out of 10. A long, dramatic career and a European court ruling in her favour, set against a live case and a harm record we couldn't fully verify.

Tymoshenko is the face of Ukrainian politics for a generation. She came out of the gas business, rose to prominence leading the 2004 Orange Revolution protests, and became the country's first woman prime minister in 2005, then again from 2007 to 2010. Few Ukrainian politicians have had a bigger rise or a bigger set of enemies.

Her 2011 jailing is the big story. A Kyiv court sentenced her to seven years over a 2009 gas deal with Russia, which she and her supporters called political. In 2013 the European Court of Human Rights ruled her 2011 arrest was unlawful and politically motivated, though it did not overturn the sentence itself.

The fresh trouble started in January 2026. Ukrainian investigators from NABU and SAPO searched her party offices and told her she was a suspect in an alleged scheme to give MPs improper benefits in return for loyal votes. She told parliament and the press the recordings were fabricated and the case was political pressure. Nothing has been proven in court.

By April 2026 the pre-trial investigation was finished and the indictment had gone to court. A court set bail in January, and later turned down a defence bid to throw the charges out. Her side says it's a political hit job ahead of elections, while investigators say recordings back their case; where you land depends on how much you trust the agencies versus her.

On the harm check, we have to be straight: we couldn't open enough reliable, dated reporting to weigh what she has said and done on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate. Some reports mention a 2022 petition she started against Ukraine's Istanbul Convention law, but we couldn't verify it with a source we could read, so it isn't counted. That's a gap, not a clean bill.

On the good stuff, she stayed in public life through years in jail, and the Strasbourg ruling backs her view that the 2011 arrest was political. Beyond that, we couldn't pin down charity or kind acts with sources we could open, so we won't pad it out.