Serhiy Leshchenko, Ukrayinska Pravda journalist
We Ukrainians have received a unique chance to reboot our country. This didn’t just happen accidentally.This is a fateful gift for which we have paid with a river of coffins in Kyiv.
Following the failure of the Orange Revolution, it seemed that we were to stay under a dictatorship for decades. However, after paying the terrible price of a hundred dead heroes, we have received a second chance. This chance is much like pressing the restart button in politics. Now, leaders with flawless moral qualities will hopefully come to power – people who can say “NO!” to Akhmetov, Firtash, Novinsky and others, instead of making deals with them under the table.
Yes, Tymoshenko was convicted illegally and the trial was politically motivated. There was no proof of her personal enrichment from her gas contracts with Putin. However, with all due respect, it is no longer her turn to manage Ukraine.
I have some financial documents similar to those recently found in Mezhygiriya.The documents in my possession prove that Tymoshenko paid Lazarenko. She didn’t pay him 100 UAH but 100 MILLION USD – minimum. I have video of an FBI agent in which he testifies that Tymoshenko was an accomplice of Lazarenko and was paying him bribes. I have heaps of invoices paid by her to Lazarenko [and] testimonies of her partners and even of her fake managers.
This evidence was not gathered by corrupt Ukrainian prosecutors but by an American investigation carried out by the Department of Justice and the FBI.
In addition, there are many other details. There are eyewitness accounts that you, Yulia Volodymyrivna, cancelled your flight to New York in fear that you would be served with a court summons for the Lazarenko case. And there is also this description that Georgy Gongadze gave you in 1999:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sb4kgaZHjU
Just please don’t tell us that there were no other options of running a business in any other way in the 1990s. Everyone has a choice as to whether to pay bribes.
I don’t want newspapers to write about the future President of Ukraine, a country that has gone through bloodshed, as someone with a corrupt past. But if Tymoshenko becomes the President of Ukraine, that is what I will have to write about.
Let Tymoshenko be free. Let her run her business or be involved in charity. Let her be a director of Mezhyhiriya. Just not the President of our Ukraine! People gathered on Maidan not for her. Tymoshenko’s own smaller Maidan was a bit further down Khreshchatyk Street – the empty, lifeless tents by the Pecherskiy court, filled with nothing but the wind.
And please don’t try to label me as a someone who goes “against-everyone”. I have never been one. Maidan has given birth to thousands of leaders who will manage our Ukraine better than Tymoshenko – leaders who don’t have corrupt pasts behind them or corrupt futures as well. Let Parubiy, Yarosh or that guy who went on stage yesterday with an ultimatum to Yanukovych after which he resigned – let [any of them] be our President. Just let it NOT be Tymoshenko.
Translated by Oksana Poliakova
Euromaidan PR 
Pingback: Yes, our Govt. was behind the coup in Ukraine | Eatgrueldog
I agree – you need a completely fresh start…
Me – just some English guy.
So who was ” that guy who went on stage yesterday with an ultimatum to Yanukovych after which he resigned”.
Sotnyk Volodymyr Parasiuk, a 26 year old videographer, I think, from around Lviv who’s been part of the self defence operation at Maidan for the past few months.. He grabbed the mike when the deal was being presented and voiced the crowd’s outrage with politicking. He’s not with any party, but he said if Yanuk didn’t resign by 10 am he and his boys would march in on him. Many believe his frustrated, angry expression scared Yanuk into leaving town, and turned the tide of the action Friday night. He’s since done a couple of interviews and is a minor celebrity and hero of Maidan, and his conversation shows him to be an ordinary, and yet extraordinary, measured thinker, speaker and loyal Ukrainian. It’s a shame you don’t speak Ukrainian, because his speech on stage is powerful and striking and heartfelt
We written and well said, her time is past, Ukraine is no longer the country it was when she went to jail. We need new leaders that understand the meaning of the rule of law and justice, transparency and open management. We need leaders that know how to manage and to bring real progress through systems of real democracy. We do not need populism, slogans and revenge. When our mourning is ended and those who gave their lives for our freedom enshrined in monuments to their courage then we need to devote every power in the land to rebuilding the nation and it’s economy and in that time perhaps we will even learn to forgive but that cannot be with Yulia as President
Pingback: Yulia, enough | Euromaidan Wache Berlin
Leshchenko enough repeating, ad nauseam, your “enough” from abroad! Stop giving unsolicited advice to people who fought against the regime while you kept your head in the safe zone. We are astute enough to figure out for ourselves whom to vote for.
She had her chance in power, and she was a failure. It was not corruption but the incompetence of her government which caused the election of Yanukovych. It now is the time for new leadership if Ukraine is to prosper. The new government should embrace Ukraine’s multi-cultural society, including ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. It must reject the anti-Semitism of the far right. But, most importantly, it must be a government of new people and new ideas.
why he tell from the name of all ukrainians? Who allows him that?