Yulia Tymoshenko, heroine of the 2004 orange revolution and today nationalist leader (yet pro-Europe) candidate to Presidential post, is again causing a scandal. The Ukrainian pasionaria has a great popularity and is often seen as an example also outside national borders. The European Union strongly supported her release when she was arrested during the pro-Russian government in Kiev.
Yet, her role as paladin of democracy has lately vacillated. A short clip made on May 3 by a journalist in Odessa to document the visit of Tymoshenko in the city revealed the contradictions of the Ukrainian leader.
When it comes to supporting her people, the former Prime Minister does no chicken out. She even calls for violence…in the clip there is the footage of a meeting with some officials and Tymoshenko, talking to her collaborators, says: “On the victory day in Ukraine…to provoke Odessa, you need to attack Russian veterans.”
Her idea was to attack during the May 9 festival in which the Victory Day against Germany in 1945 is celebrated in several countries formerly belonging to the USSR – with parades in which former soldiers march together, veterans who are about 90 years old now. They were Tymoshenko’s objective, and she want to use the ultras in doing so (given that they are strongly contaminated by Neo-Nazi ideas).
In Ukraine, far right movements were caught using totally undemocratic methods several times. Last April, the leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Petro Symonenko, was even attacked at the Parliament. He was having a speech against the Svoboda neo-Fascists, and two representatives of the party led by Oleksandr Sych took away his microphone and threw him down the podium.
