Nice profile of the ideological and energetic force behind Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, by the BBC. Here's one quote that captures her essence:
Ms Tymoshenko said she never doubted for one day that Mr [Viktor] Yushchenko would become president.
"I watched as that faith was justified," she said. "The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage."
Those same monsters helped the Russians create nonsense charges against her for attempted bribery when she was in charge of a Ukrainian gas company, and she's endured a politically motivated prison sentence under former Ukrainian dictator-lite Leonid Kuchma. Recently she canceled a trip to Russia because the Russians claimed they would arrest her on the bribery charge (so much for diplomatic immunity). She said that Russian old habits of trodding upon Ukraine die hard, thus the Russian bureaucracy still shows Ukraine no respect.
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